Josh Richards - The Engelbrechts east extension, Mount Gambia

00:00:09
Matt Waters: Hey, there dive buddies. And welcome to the

00:00:11
penultimate show of season three. Today I'm talking to a

00:00:14
man who doesn't actually know how to say no in life. A diver,

00:00:18
soldier, Royal Marine, comedian, author, ginger cave diving

00:00:23
Wombat, and even a candidate for a one way trip to Mars. Josh

00:00:28
Richards has hit the mainstream media recently with his findings

00:00:31
of a cave extension in Mount Gambia, and Josh joins me today

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to talk through some of his life adventures. And of course, that

00:00:38
fantastic find, and it's exploration. Welcome to the

00:00:41
show, buddy.

00:00:41
Josh Richards: Hey, think I'm good. Thanks for having me.

00:00:44
Matt Waters: Now, we've obviously brought you on the

00:00:46
show to talk about caves and stuff like that. But let's back

00:00:50
it way back up and just find out a little bit more about you

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because I think this is the first time I've ever had well,

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not only a comedian, but a ginger and someone that could

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possibly have lived on Mars. Ticking a lot of boxes.

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Josh Richards: I try. I definitely try it. Yeah, I've

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always called it career add. So let's try and do things at once

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all at once and do them all relatively poorly. But just keep

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crashing out it as hard as I can.

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Matt Waters: Well, how did you how did you get into the diving

00:01:26
side of things to start with?

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Josh Richards: I started diving very early, to be honest with

00:01:30
your dad was a was a diver for the Army for a very long time.

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He started doing recreational civilian diving, sort of in the

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early 80s, I think, became a Scuba instructor. So I grew up

00:01:44
with it right from before I was born. That was diving and

00:01:48
teaching and all that sort of stuff. So by the time it finally

00:01:51
rolled around to me sort of hitting 12 I was already well

00:01:55
and truly ready to do sort of my junior open water. I think my

00:01:59
oldest Patti certification is from when I'm nine I think it's

00:02:03
like a junior skin diver or something like that. And so

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like, very much a water baby started very, very early.

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There's a great photo of me with my dad's like his old aqualung

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regulator and one of these masks in the bathtub at age six. So

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yeah, it started very early. I kind of stepped in and out of

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it. It became very much a thing that I did with my dad, mom and

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dad was Dad had left the army a long time before. And sort of

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all through my teens, it was mainly sort of Cray fishing and

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I don't I don't like Cray fish. I don't eat Cray fish. But it

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was a it was a thing to do. Obviously, also ginger, which

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meant going out on the boat got sunburned. I tend to get a

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little bit seasick. So it's like it wasn't a great combination of

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things. There's still a little bit of like, teenage trauma of

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being sort of dragged out to go on these fishing trips with Dad

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go to place like gnarly fishing station and dive with Tiger

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sharks and hammerheads, and all that sort of stuff while trying

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to fish. And that was my teenage years. And I sort of went you

00:03:06
know what this, this kind of sucks, stepped away from it,

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went to university, joined the army myself and started showing

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an interest in the diving side of things. From there, I kind of

00:03:20
went down the pathway of becoming a open water

00:03:23
instructor. I did all my technical diving, all my

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technical training now open circuit tech, probably early

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20s. Same year that I became a PADI instructor. Same year I

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became an SSI instructor, again, multi add overload ad to do all

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the things at once. I kind of stepped back from all that I

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left the army and moved across to the Navy as a diver, which

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was fairly short lived. Lots of paperwork, lots of being stuffed

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around and sort of going through the whole defence circus was not

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great. So I kind of turned around to the Australian Defence

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Force and went you know, you can you can stick this and move to

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the UK and join the Royal Marine commandos. And the idea was

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Yeah, going through and becoming a combat swimmer for those guys.

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So why the

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Matt Waters: hell? What? What sparked that one? I mean, I'm ex

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forces myself not not a boot neck like you guys, when you

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guys were digging trenches. I was booking into five star

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hotels.

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Josh Richards: Nice. Yeah. My grandfather on my again, on my

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dad's side, there's quite a lot. There's a long military history

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through my both sides of my family, particularly my dad's

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side, I think. I don't say this too often to folks from the UK,

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but the furthest we've traced the family name back to is is

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actually the the Oliver Cromwell's right hand man that

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brought some of the engineering across from the Dutch to knock

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down castle walls. Wow. Yeah. So our army Army engineers, I was

00:04:51
an Army engineer. dad was an engineer as well. They're called

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sappers, and it comes from the Dutch term SAP where you would

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dig trenches towards a castle wall We'll dig under the wall

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and then pack it full of hay and wood and set it on fire and it

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will drop the walls down. And that's where the Army Engineers

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sort of get their name from. And yet turns out my great, great,

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great, great, great, great, whatever was the guy that

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brought that technology across from the Dutch to help Oliver

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Cromwell knocked down castle walls. So I don't say I didn't I

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never said that. When I was a botnet. I never told anyone that

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while I was in, but yeah, it's long history on that side of

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things. So I kind of Yeah. After I got washed traitor with the

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ATF, I sort of went What do I do? And that sort of turnaround

00:05:37
sent Well, there's two options for it. You can either learn

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French and become join the Foreign Legion or you can use

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your your ancestry visa, use your your heritage, and go and

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join the Royal Marines. So I opted for number two.

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Matt Waters: Okay. And dad, Dad's originally British is he?

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Josh Richards: Dad's dad's family's British, so dad was

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born in Australia, but all the rest of the family is Welsh. So

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my 240s and let's see, I know, I know, the white lines a lot.

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Well, ironically, that's quite dark. Like it doesn't. doesn't

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explain Yeah, anyway.

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Matt Waters: I was life in the in the Marines. I mean, I've got

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a lot of respect for the Marines.

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Josh Richards: It was interesting. The reality for me

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was that I was very good at it. But I hated what it was turning

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me into. I felt myself falling into a role where I was pretty

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much an enforcer was a few years older than most of the guys that

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I was going through training with. I was one of the few that

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had previous experience. And I was scared of the things these

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guys were doing, that was going to wind up them dying. They were

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different. We had recruits die during training. There were

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things that happens where Yeah, and I, I stepped into quite a an

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aggressive, nasty role that I really didn't like this angry

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little five foot six ginger kid from Australia, screaming at

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these six foot three county rugby players. Because they

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would, they were making mistakes and not realising how dangerous

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the mistakes they were making were. So I didn't like what it

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turned me into. They were very much at the time, this is all

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2010. So it was, we were all gearing up to here to head out

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and deploy on Herrick 1314. And so it was everyone's going to

00:07:34
Afghanistan, everyone's heading out. Everyone was on a war

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footing. Everyone would be going out. If you weren't doing

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training afterwards. To become a driver, or modern or whatever

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you were doing casualty replacement, like you were

00:07:48
heading straight out. And quite a few of the guys that I trained

00:07:51
with, went straight out as soon as they finished training. So

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it's one of the unique things about the Royal Marines, they're

00:07:57
the only unit in the world where you're your final sort of your

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final four months of training is preparation for war, you can

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deploy directly out of basic training, and are the only unit

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that does it. So it was pretty scary on that front. I got a

00:08:14
real test for recognising I suppose that I didn't want to be

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there. So

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Matt Waters: So from you know, you've done the Marines bit and

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then decided it's time to bang out was that the return to

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Australia then a

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Josh Richards: little bit. I actually love living in the UK.

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And the reality with the with the Royal Marines was I got

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sick, we got bitten by a tick out on double. Didn't sort of

00:08:40
recognise it. I didn't know it was gonna I've been bitten by

00:08:42
hundreds of ticks with the Army here in Australia. But didn't

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didn't give it a second thought came back off this this

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midwinter exercise that we've done, pull the tick off my

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stomach and sort of went all right over whatever. And five

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weeks later couldn't walk up a set of stairs that picked up

00:08:59
Lyme disease, and it just annihilated me. So I ended up

00:09:04
spending, I think it was about 1012 weeks in rehab, the hill

00:09:09
and the stepping back from the high intensity and stepping back

00:09:13
from the push, push push. I had an opportunity to actually think

00:09:17
about what I was doing, had an opportunity to see the guys that

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I was training with, and some of the attitudes that they had

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around different things and kind of recognise that I it's not

00:09:29
somewhere I wanted to be. And the the biggest reality out of

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all of it was that I didn't I didn't really belong in the

00:09:36
military. I was very good at it. It was one and this is a common

00:09:39
theme for me being good at different things, but actually

00:09:42
not belonging there or not wanting to be there. And seeing

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nasty elements in my personality sort of come out because of the

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jobs that I'm doing. So yeah, it was. In the end it was a fairly

00:09:53
easy decision to make to leave. My dad regularly asks like do I

00:09:58
miss it? And I know he misses it now I have never missed any part

00:10:02
of folks talk about like missing their mates and boba and I do

00:10:06
still have some really great mates. But not that many. And I

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certainly wish I could unlearn some of the things that I

00:10:15
learned. So I, but I love the UK, and I loved being there. It

00:10:20
was an interesting time to be there. And yeah, I ended up

00:10:24
sticking around for a few years. And that's essentially how I got

00:10:27
into comedy. So I done a little bit of stand up in Australia

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before I left, and didn't really know what to do with myself and

00:10:36
kind of went well, I can do this comedy thing. While I try and

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find a job, it'll give me something, something sort of a

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centerline that I can hang on to, while I reshape my entire

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life that has previously been based all around the military.

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And, yeah, it drew me into comedy. I ended up working for,

00:10:54
for an artist, or we ended up working for Damien Hirst, out in

00:10:57
Gloucestershire for a while, as his science advisor setting

00:11:01
things on fire. And yeah, doing doing stand up. That's

00:11:07
essentially how I got into stand up. And it was actually the

00:11:09
maths stuff that brought me back to Australia. I'd been doing it

00:11:12
for a few years, I've been doing stand up for a few years, I've

00:11:15
done a few tours, and was getting burnt out with it,

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decided write a comedy show about sending people one way to

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Mars is kind of a metaphor for me leaving comedy, and found

00:11:27
this organisation that was planning to do it. So I signed

00:11:29
up and I decided the UK media would not going to want to chat

00:11:33
to some random Ozzie living in Brighton. So I came back to

00:11:37
Australia and started speaking to the media and speaking to

00:11:40
schools and folks like that here instead. So

00:11:44
Matt Waters: let's see how

00:11:45
Josh Richards: that's a bit of an adventure.

00:11:48
Matt Waters: Adventure. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so we've we've done

00:11:52
the military book, we've done the UK, we've done comedy, we've

00:11:54
come back, and we're now talking about Mars. Now, let, let's get

00:11:58
into the weeds of this one. Because I kind of guarantee that

00:12:02
I'm never gonna have a possible Martian on this. What's the

00:12:09
what's the background, so it could be a bit more detail on,

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on what you found.

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Josh Richards: So I going way back. I originally did a degree

00:12:18
in Applied Physics and psychology. And as part of my

00:12:21
physics degree, we were looking at all sorts of different

00:12:23
things. And I ended up reading a paper by a fairly well known guy

00:12:27
by the name of Professor Paul Davies, who was essentially

00:12:30
arguing that the first people going to Mars would have to go

00:12:33
one way based on the engineering based on the the changes to

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their body, you realistically should be planning to send

00:12:40
people one way, the challenge is to bring them back orders of

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magnitude more than what it is to get them there and keep them

00:12:47
alive. So why not send them and keep them there? And I remember

00:12:50
reading it back in the early 2000s. And thinking, This is

00:12:54
awesome. Like, why the hell would you want to come back

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what's so great about Earth, like, get a chance to go and

00:12:59
live on another planet? Sign me up. And that idea kind of

00:13:03
circled back as I was looking at getting out of comedy. And I

00:13:08
sort of went, you know, what I do really, this is, it's a nice

00:13:11
metaphor, it's a chance to talk about science, a lot of the

00:13:13
shows that I've done, had done, were based around science. The

00:13:18
science and religion have doomsday and all sorts of weird

00:13:21
and wonderful, different things I loved using comedy as a

00:13:25
vehicle for science communication. So I went, you

00:13:28
know what we can write this whole show about Mars. I know

00:13:31
lots of stuff about Mars, let's write a show about Mars. And

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we'll talk about how we should have gone should go in there

00:13:37
2030 years ago. And again, bear in mind, this is 2010. So sort

00:13:42
of arguing that we've probably probably should have gone in the

00:13:44
90s and had the technology to go in the 90s. Why didn't we do it

00:13:48
in the show was originally going to be quite better. I just

00:13:52
finished it. Edinburgh Fringe for the third or fourth year, I

00:13:55
think, and things have not gone well. And I was pretty dark. And

00:14:01
I was done with comedy and wanted to write this quite

00:14:03
bitter, angry show about how humanity sucked because we

00:14:07
hadn't gone past low Earth orbit since 1971. And yet, the whole

00:14:13
thing spun around in a heartbeat. I again, was sitting

00:14:16
in a little cafe in Brighton and started researching the show

00:14:19
typed Mars One way to try and find the original article to

00:14:22
start sort of basing the show around it. And Mars One had made

00:14:26
their first sort of public announcement about two or three

00:14:28
days before. And so my entire feed from Google was filled out

00:14:32
with this announcement from this bizarre Dutch based organisation

00:14:37
saying they were going to open applications up for astronauts

00:14:39
and anyone from anywhere who was over the age of 18, fit and

00:14:43
healthy and had the right sort of aptitude would be able to

00:14:46
apply. And so the comedy show instantly changed. It went from

00:14:50
being said quite dark, quite bitter and saying why didn't we

00:14:53
do this? Humans suck, too. I am signing up for this. They're

00:14:57
looking for a crew of four who are the other three going to be

00:15:00
And I basically shaped the entire that particular comedy

00:15:04
show around the structure of a band, you need four different

00:15:09
kinds of personalities, and they kind of roughly meet up with the

00:15:11
same stereotype. So you get a four piece band. So like, you

00:15:15
know, a quirky, high maintenance lead singer that's sort of

00:15:18
leading and driving things forward. A bass player who kind

00:15:21
of keeps them in check a little bit, a weirdo keyboard player

00:15:25
who's got specialist skills that no one really understands. And a

00:15:28
drummer who just kind of keeps everything together. And as

00:15:31
always happy, just consistent. And always looking for those,

00:15:35
those three other band members, I suppose. And that was, which

00:15:38
was

00:15:40
Matt Waters: Which one were you to start with,

00:15:41
Josh Richards: I was arguing that I was the lead singer.

00:15:45
Because I was writing the comedy show, the reality is I'm not.

00:15:48
The reality is I'm probably much more of a quirky weirdo keyboard

00:15:51
player who does Nietzschean and get really involved in

00:15:55
specialist skills. Yeah, but I often I need to be offset by

00:16:01
other folks who I can take charge, I will live willingly

00:16:04
take charge, but it's not something I want to do. So I'm

00:16:07
much more interested in Yeah, having a specialist set of

00:16:10
skills that I can help out with rather than trying to run the

00:16:13
whole thing. So I ended up writing another three shows

00:16:18
around all of it, and turn two of them into books and all sorts

00:16:22
of stuff. So it's been, it's been a big 10 years. And it's

00:16:25
realistically only in the last couple of years, I've stepped

00:16:28
back from all of the Mars side of things, focused on cave

00:16:31
diving, the programme itself shut down at the end of last

00:16:35
year, they sort of went, they couldn't get the funding, they'd

00:16:38
run into a lot of roadblocks, and they sort of finally decided

00:16:42
that it was going to be a little bit too much for that particular

00:16:44
project. But I still speak about it a lot. I still visit schools,

00:16:49
I still had I had a school contact me last week sort of

00:16:51
booking me for National Science Week, in August, next year.

00:16:56
There's still a lot of interest, still a lot of people who want

00:16:59
to talk about it. It's just a shame that the specific

00:17:02
programme that I was involved with has shut down. But

00:17:05
Matt Waters: well, it's it's it's such a an amazing, you

00:17:08
know, concept, you know, let's let's, let's do this thing,

00:17:11
what's, you know, you sign up for it and say, Hey, you can

00:17:14
apply? What's that? What's the procedure that you're gonna have

00:17:17
to go through though, because, I mean, you've only got a look at

00:17:19
those two on the screen right now you're five foot six. And

00:17:23
twice your body weight, I'm gonna take up far too much.

00:17:25
Josh Richards: So I'm out, I fit a little bit better. It's, it's

00:17:30
an interesting one. There's a lot of a lot of preconceptions

00:17:33
around what people expect an astronaut to be. And the reality

00:17:38
is what we actually want for people going to Mars is

00:17:41
radically different from the right stuff. It's been a running

00:17:44
joke for all of us that the right stuff is the wrong stuff

00:17:47
for Mars. Those a type personalities very driven, very

00:17:51
competitive, you know, fittest I can run further, I can do more

00:17:54
push ups, all that sort of nonsense. It's the exact

00:17:57
opposite of what we actually want. I've joked quite regularly

00:18:01
about us really wanting to send for Homer Simpsons, to Mars.

00:18:06
Homer Simpson is blended with like MacGyver. Richard Dean

00:18:10
Anderson, not the new MacGyver, but like Richard Dean Anderson

00:18:12
with a mullet, MacGyver. As a skill set, you really want folks

00:18:17
who can fix lots of problems, they can improvise, they can,

00:18:21
you know, they're generalists. They're not the top of any

00:18:24
particular game, they are very, very broad in their knowledge,

00:18:27
they can always get specialist information and backup and

00:18:31
support from people back on Earth. But because of the time

00:18:35
delay between the two planets, it takes anywhere between three

00:18:39
and 45 minutes to send communications backwards and

00:18:42
forwards between Earth and Mars, you can get that information.

00:18:45
But if something's gone horribly wrong, you need folks who can

00:18:48
act quickly in an emergency to stabilise the situation, and

00:18:51
then get guidance and advice back from Earth. So you kind of

00:18:55
want couch potatoes, who sit around not do a whole lot, watch

00:18:58
a whole lot of Netflix, keep an eye on the plants keep things

00:19:02
running, especially for the first two years. And then later

00:19:05
on, you might have the more adventurous types who will start

00:19:08
going outside the habitat going and exploring different areas

00:19:12
going and venturing out. But we're, we're actually there's a

00:19:15
lot more parallels between folks going to Mars and folks that we

00:19:19
send down to Antarctica, or we see on nuclear submarines or

00:19:23
long range Arctic patrols. There's a lot of parallels with

00:19:27
those kinds of personalities. And I don't know if you've ever

00:19:30
dealt with submarines, but they are weird. And that's the kind

00:19:35
of personnel that's, that's actually the kind of people we

00:19:37
want to send rather than these high performance fighter pilot

00:19:41
types. We want we kind of want to send folks who create their

00:19:45
own culture. They know what they need to know really well, but

00:19:48
they're also very general and they're happy to learn and happy

00:19:51
to laugh and they might appear weird from the outside, but

00:19:54
inside their particular group, they've got a very strong

00:19:58
culture that supports each other

00:20:00
Matt Waters: I think one of the main things there is you're

00:20:01
going to have to have four people that are gonna get on for

00:20:04
a long period of time in a very small space.

00:20:07
Josh Richards: And the other interesting one, this is

00:20:09
probably one that the military doesn't deal with as much is

00:20:12
it's also a mixed gender crew. So it's two men or two women. So

00:20:16
there's all those other dynamics that come in, when you you have

00:20:20
a mixed gender crew, we need that, basically, for stability.

00:20:24
Because you put four guys together, they're going to kill

00:20:26
each other within a few months. For women together, they're

00:20:29
probably going to kill each other within a few months. But

00:20:31
there's all these complex dynamics that need to be

00:20:33
navigated through all of that as well. So the big thing that Mars

00:20:37
One was going to do, they were screening us out. So they were I

00:20:41
shouldn't even screeners that we were screening ourselves out,

00:20:43
they were asking us really hard questions, getting us to do

00:20:47
these applications to fill out videos, and getting us to think

00:20:50
about what we were doing. And most folks actually dropped out

00:20:53
themselves. They weren't kicked out by miles one or excluded or

00:20:56
anything like that. They decided, Oh, actually, no, now

00:20:59
that I've thought about this, this is not for me. And they

00:21:02
pulled themselves out of the programme. We went from 202,

00:21:08
initially, down to the last 100 candidates. And realistically,

00:21:13
it was the cut from it was the psych interview that we did,

00:21:18
that reduced the group from about 660 down to that final

00:21:21
100. That was the first time Mars One actually were excluding

00:21:24
people, they had good candidates, good people in that

00:21:27
list. But they decided not to go with them because they weren't

00:21:30
as good as someone else was. So it was a really interesting

00:21:35
process to go through the actual selection process all up,

00:21:38
started in 2013, from memory applications closed in August of

00:21:44
2013. And actually announced that 100 In February of 2015. So

00:21:50
realistically, the five, six years after that, that we've

00:21:55
been sort of, it's just been waiting. And it's been a whole

00:21:58
lot of waiting for the next phase, where they'd start

00:22:00
putting us together, put us into stressful situations, see how we

00:22:03
work together and teams problem solve, all those sort of things

00:22:06
that never eventuated? Unfortunately,

00:22:09
Matt Waters: yeah, yeah, I can imagine that the last thing that

00:22:11
we're looking for is alpha males that are just going to upset the

00:22:13
applecart

00:22:14
Josh Richards: we, I'll say it now that the programme shut

00:22:17
down, we had a, we had a few. And we, we also had a little

00:22:23
secret Facebook group, a secret Facebook group, where all of us

00:22:26
could get in there and chat amongst ourselves. And I don't

00:22:29
think I would be alone in saying that. There were a lot of us out

00:22:33
of that 100, that were very concerned about a couple of

00:22:36
specific individuals turning up, not yet no point delving into

00:22:43
into it too deeply. But those sorts of folks, they showed

00:22:47
their colours very early on. We all tried to give everyone as

00:22:52
much as best a chance as possible. And I had a couple of

00:22:55
interesting situations where I had potentially a really great

00:22:59
impression of someone that I'd seen do interviews, I'd emailed

00:23:04
them, I'd done all sorts of different things. And then I met

00:23:07
them in person and went, Oh, God, no, no, no, there is no way

00:23:10
we're going to Mars together. And likewise, folks who I

00:23:14
absolutely wrote off folks who I sort of thought no, like they're

00:23:18
an idiot, based on their interviews based on all sorts of

00:23:22
different interactions, I would then meet them and sort of go or

00:23:26
not 100% Sure. And then step back from the situation and go,

00:23:30
Oh, wait, no, no, he's, he's 22. Like, he's still figuring

00:23:35
himself out. Or he, you know, she was in an incredibly

00:23:40
stressful situation at that particular time. And so yeah,

00:23:44
it's been interesting, interacting with all of these

00:23:46
different candidates and getting an impression of who they are as

00:23:49
people. And actually seeing them over 10 years or five, six years

00:23:54
that we've all been shortlisted, seeing them actually develop as

00:23:57
people as well. It's been really interesting. I've made some

00:23:59
really fantastic friends out of it. But yeah, there were

00:24:03
definitely a few folks that we were we're hoping wouldn't be

00:24:07
further shortlisted later on, because they would not be the

00:24:10
great would not be the kind of people you'd want to go camping

00:24:13
with.

00:24:14
Matt Waters: Yeah. Oh, well, it would, you know, from the guys

00:24:18
that are running the show, it would make sense to leave people

00:24:20
like that and just to see how you react

00:24:23
Josh Richards: to it, then they discuss that as well. There's

00:24:27
definitely testing that would go on, and there are definitely

00:24:31
elements, they were deliberately they weren't being very upfront

00:24:34
about deliberately creating stressful environments for us.

00:24:38
There was going to be five or six days of essentially

00:24:40
corporate team building, but with all the controls taken off

00:24:44
it so the kind of, you know, you go and do a corporate team

00:24:47
building weekend and you kind of built do challenges and build

00:24:50
things together. Now make those same things competitive. Now

00:24:54
make everyone it completely and utterly exhausted with sleep

00:24:58
deprivation and Make it an environment where you know,

00:25:02
you're pushing to be part of a select group of 12 to 24 people

00:25:06
that would start the training, it probably would have gotten

00:25:10
quite ugly quite quickly. And so those more hostile

00:25:15
personalities, hopefully would have been filtered out in the

00:25:17
first couple of days. But I know that they would have left some

00:25:20
people in because some folks, it's, it's that whole thing of

00:25:24
some folks push limits, and other folks pull back. And you

00:25:28
don't want a completely conservative group. And you

00:25:31
don't want to complete the progressive group, you want that

00:25:33
internal tension. But it's about that group finding a balance

00:25:37
with that tension, so that, you know, so and so pisses me off,

00:25:41
but they come up with fantastic ideas, and so and sofas has me

00:25:45
off, because they are always holding things back. But

00:25:49
sometimes I need to be held back, so I don't go and do

00:25:51
stupid things. So it's about finding that crew dynamic that

00:25:55
works for everyone.

00:25:57
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Now, how confident are you

00:26:01
that you got down to the whittling stick?

00:26:04
Josh Richards: I, I don't know. I am still not entirely

00:26:08
convinced that I have got the right personality type for and

00:26:11
since the programme shut down, and I've started getting

00:26:13
involved in other things, I've become even less certain about

00:26:17
that. At the time I was quite I was like, you know, I'm, I'm not

00:26:22
certain, but I'm going to do everything I can to make this a

00:26:24
reality. I've shaped my entire life around this, I've become an

00:26:27
ambassador for I've cut off relationships, I've done all

00:26:30
sorts of different things to make Mars my life. And then as

00:26:36
we all started to sort of lose a bit of faith in it. And then

00:26:39
eventually the project shut down. I started questioning a

00:26:42
lot more of that, and started to sort of recognise that, hey, I

00:26:46
do have a lot more to offer here on Earth, I've got a lot of

00:26:48
things that I could be doing. And maybe, you know, completely

00:26:54
and utterly obsessing on this one thing, which To its credit,

00:26:58
kept me focused for 10 years, which nothing else has ever done

00:27:01
for keeping me on the track for that. Maybe there's other things

00:27:07
I could do. So I'm still uncertain. I'm glad that I got

00:27:12
as far as I did. I feel like I would have been in for a decent

00:27:16
chance to get through the next cut into this into the group of

00:27:21
the 12 to 24 people that would actually start 10 years of

00:27:24
training. Whether or not I would have been on that first crew, I

00:27:29
I've always said I don't care. And I that's one thing I'm very,

00:27:32
very certain about. I've never actually cared about any of it,

00:27:36
whether I was specifically part of it, the important thing for

00:27:39
me was that someone was doing it. It was always about someone

00:27:43
getting involved. And the best way for me to advocate for

00:27:46
people going and living on other planets was to put my hand up

00:27:49
and sign to be there to be one of the folks who go yes, I would

00:27:52
have 100% do this, and advocate for that. So whether or not I

00:27:57
personally was the right person for it. I don't know. I may

00:28:01
never know. But I knew the best way to support the ideas to

00:28:07
support what I wanted to see happen was to put my hand up for

00:28:12
Matt Waters: effort at first. And what a hell of an experience

00:28:16
Josh Richards: it was there. It was an adventure. I think we we

00:28:18
figured it out that I spoke to something like 130 kids over

00:28:22
the space of seven or eight years like it was Yeah. And to

00:28:25
me, that's the biggest thing that was the far more important

00:28:28
thing out of it. If, if an astronaut had come and visited

00:28:32
my school, when I was in year seven, when I was 12, or

00:28:35
something like that, it would have changed my whole life, I

00:28:39
almost certainly wouldn't have gone into the military, I

00:28:42
probably would have gone down a far more focused pathway with

00:28:47
science engineering, even more than what I did. I'm glad for

00:28:51
the experience that I had, I'm glad that I went off and did all

00:28:54
the different things that I did, because it did make me a good

00:28:57
candidate for what they were looking for. But if someone had

00:29:01
come along and visited my my school when I was in primary

00:29:04
school and talked about how when I grew up, I'd have the

00:29:08
opportunity to you know, potentially live on another

00:29:11
planet, it would have made a huge impact for me. So that was

00:29:14
the much bigger thing that was far more important for me than

00:29:17
whether or not the project ever succeeded. It was being able to

00:29:20
basically go and speak to year six and sevens in particular,

00:29:24
and sort of say hey, science is pretty awesome don't lose

00:29:28
interest in it get involved. And there's really cool things that

00:29:31
you can do if you if you pursue this so yeah, I'm happy about

00:29:36
that right.

00:29:37
Matt Waters: It's a great age to get them as well because perfect

00:29:40
I even going on nearly 50 years old I still remember being a kid

00:29:44
and wishing that I was going to be an astronaut one day and fly

00:29:47
through fly to the moon. You know what to have a dude rock up

00:29:50
and say, you know, this is what we're gonna do. It's it's like

00:29:53
wow,

00:29:54
Josh Richards: yeah. And even if my biggest hope with all of it

00:29:58
was not that I would Don't necessarily walk on Mars, it

00:30:02
would be that potentially one of the 130, something 1000 kids

00:30:06
that I spoke to, they would do it, it's far more important for

00:30:11
me that that idea is supported. And of those kids, you know,

00:30:16
maybe one or two would have the opportunity to go and walk on

00:30:19
another planet. But 10s of 1000s of the others would be involved

00:30:23
in industries that would be supporting that would be making

00:30:26
life better on earth, all these different elements. So it's a

00:30:30
bit like, you know, a kid wanting to be a fighter pilot,

00:30:33
when, when I was in my early teens, I wanted to be a fighter

00:30:37
pilot, I want to fly FA teens. And learning more about that

00:30:43
later on. It's like, you've got one fighter pilot, but you've

00:30:45
got a crew of, you know, 100 plus people who refuel it, do

00:30:51
maintenance on it. Like, directed after a flight. So you

00:30:57
know, there's hundreds of, of people hours that go into a

00:31:01
single flight hour for an F 18. Same as you know, driving f

00:31:05
ones, you've got this enormous crew of people that support one

00:31:09
driver, the drivers just at the pointy ends, and we all sort of

00:31:13
go, Oh, that's amazing. But there's a massive crew of people

00:31:16
that are there to support it. So I suppose I wanted to inspire

00:31:22
kids by talking about walking on another planet, but also

00:31:25
encourage the ones who wouldn't necessarily do that themselves,

00:31:28
but then might go and build rovers that support the people

00:31:32
on Mars, and all those different things. So that was far more

00:31:35
important for me than actually succeeding. Ever was

00:31:40
Matt Waters: good on you, mate. And, obviously, you're still

00:31:43
very active, we're doing the public speaking for the kids is

00:31:45
that going to just continue as long as you can,

00:31:47
Josh Richards: I'd like to, I don't actively pursue it

00:31:51
anymore. It is a little bit complicated for me, because I

00:31:54
have to add that sort of that little asterix on the end of it

00:31:58
turn around and saying, I'm not going anymore. If someone

00:32:02
offered me an opportunity, I'd sign up again, in a heartbeat.

00:32:06
But the project that I was involved in has shut down. And

00:32:09
that kind of, especially when it comes to the corporate speaking

00:32:12
side of things, corporate want to talk to someone who's who's

00:32:17
who's doing going places, schools are much more flexible.

00:32:21
They're sort of go oh, you know, we'd like you to come and talk

00:32:23
about Mars, you're a math specialist. But the corporate

00:32:27
speaking, the keynote side of things is definitely dialled

00:32:29
down quite a bit. And COVID knocked a huge hole in it as

00:32:32
well, that basically put a stop to pretty much everything for a

00:32:36
while there. And, but you know, different things. One of the

00:32:40
cool things about the cave diving side of stuff was

00:32:42
shifting out of as Mars One was kind of winding down. I found an

00:32:48
interest in the love for cave diving. And so I'm in the

00:32:52
process at the moment of sort of going well, if I'm not talking,

00:32:55
if we're not doing corporate keynotes about Mars anymore.

00:32:58
Maybe I can start doing corporate keynotes about cave

00:33:01
exploration. So it's, yeah, I'm, I'm writing that transition

00:33:06
phase. At the moment, I think the next few months will decide

00:33:08
whether or not I want to pursue that if I actually want to talk

00:33:11
to people anymore. Or, or, if I yeah, I focus on on book

00:33:17
writing, which is one of the other things that I've

00:33:19
absolutely loved for the last 10 years or so.

00:33:23
Matt Waters: Well, it's, I think it's a nice transition that you

00:33:28
know, the concept of living on another planet. And then I

00:33:31
explained to people, you know, people ask why I go dive and

00:33:34
it's actually visiting another world without leaving this

00:33:37
planet. And you know, what you do and what many other awesome

00:33:41
dudes and dudettes do is cave dive in, which is taking that to

00:33:45
the extreme even more. I hats off to you. Yeah, crazy.

00:33:54
Josh Richards: So Kate diving is an interesting one. For me. I

00:33:57
again, I've been diving most of my life, but it's mostly felt

00:34:02
like work. So you know, diving with dad getting crayfish, you

00:34:07
know, animals that I don't eat. And it's that always kind of

00:34:11
felt a bit like work but you know, you're doing it with that.

00:34:14
It's kind of an you know, that's a fun experience. And then doing

00:34:18
with the Navy, obviously was actual work. If I'd gone on to

00:34:21
do it with the Royal Marines, it would have been more work.

00:34:25
Teaching Scuba always felt like work to me always felt like I

00:34:28
was pushing people through a course. So we'd be able to go

00:34:33
and do cool stuff afterwards. It was never about them learning or

00:34:36
I'm not a I'm not a teacher like that. I'm not the kind of person

00:34:40
who goes are you know, I see the joy in someone's eyes when they

00:34:44
finally understand. I'm like, good you finally learnt this

00:34:47
crap. Let's move on and go and do something cool. And I've I

00:34:51
suppose in the last 12 months or so I've kind of stepped into a

00:34:55
bit more of a especially amongst cave divers a bit more of a

00:34:57
mentoring role where I'm not Teaching people anything, but

00:35:01
I'm helping them get through their, their their dives, if

00:35:05
they need to log a certain number of dives in a certain

00:35:07
number of sites, I will go and do that with them. And I won't

00:35:11
say that's felt like work. But it's been more of a case of I'm

00:35:15
helping them. I'm helping facilitate them move forward.

00:35:19
But yeah, definitely, I suppose I've had numerous people through

00:35:23
the years tell me Oh, you'd be an amazing teacher. I'm like,

00:35:25
I'd be a terrible teacher. Like I, all I do is I push people

00:35:30
through to try and get them to a certification so that when we're

00:35:34
allowed to go and do something much cooler, like can you hurry

00:35:37
up and get through this? So we can go and do that over there?

00:35:40
So the cave diving is very different from me. There's no

00:35:45
sun. There's no Wrigley's to grab you. There's no, it's

00:35:50
literally you put your gear on. You get in the water. And it

00:35:53
does. Doesn't matter what time of day it is, it doesn't matter.

00:35:56
Like you've always got lights on. So I've gone in and done

00:36:00
dives come out. And it's, you know, the sun is set afterwards.

00:36:04
And you're like, holy crap, like where did that go? Or surfacing

00:36:09
especially in somewhere like Mount Gambier, it's raining as

00:36:12
you're gearing up, you'll get into the water and you'll come

00:36:14
out and then you'll get a sunburn as you're getting out of

00:36:16
the water, because the weather is cleared. So it definitely

00:36:21
feels like a disconnect, you completely disconnect from the

00:36:24
rest of reality. While you're on the dive. You're focused on the

00:36:27
dive, you might occasionally have stray thoughts about other

00:36:30
things, but generally, you're focused on how deep are my how

00:36:34
far into the cave? Am I? Where are we going next? Where do I

00:36:37
leave my stage? Cylinder? You're, there's a whole raft of

00:36:40
different things all happening at once. Why are we doing this?

00:36:43
Where are we We're trying to get to all those. And I love that.

00:36:48
diving in the ocean. Like the running joke with my partner is

00:36:53
that why would I dive in the ocean whales shit in the ocean?

00:36:57
Like it's not it's not for caves. Caves seem to be my

00:37:04
thing. I would cave dive every day, if I could. Whereas I never

00:37:09
felt that level of passion for diving in the ocean or teaching

00:37:12
people or anything else. I found my niche, I suppose.

00:37:16
Matt Waters: Yeah. Well, so let's just wind it back a little

00:37:19
bit. How did we go from from Mars? And then back into dive

00:37:25
in? Did you have that that dry spell where you just literally

00:37:28
walked away from Scuba dive and then came back to it?

00:37:30
Josh Richards: Yeah. So I didn't dive for about seven or eight

00:37:32
years all up. And even after I left the military, I sort of I

00:37:38
looked at maybe teaching again and sort of went, I really know

00:37:42
not for me. Weirdly enough, it was I ended up doing three

00:37:47
comedy shows about Mars. And the last show that I did was called

00:37:52
Cosmic nomad. And I, the entire focus around that book and show

00:37:59
the focus of the show at the time it was originally a show

00:38:02
was looking at the things that you would do before you left

00:38:06
Earth. So you know, you've got 10 years left on Earth, what do

00:38:09
you do with your time, and I've had a book 101 things to do for

00:38:13
you die that was given to me by a friend from high school. I've

00:38:16
had that for years, and I've worked through it and ticked a

00:38:19
lot of different things off, but it started to reach a point

00:38:22
where it felt like a box ticking exercise. Yeah, I started as

00:38:26
part of this show. And then I did it even more. So when I

00:38:29
turned it into a book, I really started to ask myself, what are

00:38:33
the things I would want to do before I left Earth. And then

00:38:36
one thing that came through crystal clear through all of it

00:38:38
was cave diving. I'd never learned to cave dive, I'd read

00:38:42
about Dave shore, the Australian pilot for Cathay Pacific, who

00:38:47
died in Bushmans hole in 2005. At 286 metres or whatever it was

00:38:54
trying to recover. Dion dries body. And I that that book was

00:39:00
supposed to terrify people, like when I read raising the dead it

00:39:03
was supposed to be this is terrifying. This is so complex,

00:39:07
but I read it and went, Oh my God, I want to learn to dive on

00:39:11
a rebreather and I want to dive in cave. So that was my instant

00:39:13
reaction to reading raising the dead and it took a lot longer.

00:39:19
It took a very long time before I actually circled back around

00:39:22
to that and went this is the one thing if I if I move to Mars and

00:39:27
had to live on a cold, dead, dusty planet, like an

00:39:31
underground Martian vampire for the rest of my life. What's the

00:39:36
one thing I would miss? And it was I said Scuba diving, and

00:39:39
then I started thinking about it more. I was like, it's not the

00:39:42
Scuba diving. We'd be a little bit weightless. It's only 1/3 of

00:39:45
Earth's gravity on Mars. We'd have all that weightlessness

00:39:48
getting there. It's not the Scuba diving. It's actually

00:39:52
learned cave dive. It's discovering more and where does

00:39:55
this go and does this connect to this and all those sorts of

00:39:58
things. So And it was, yeah, it was a fairly big realisation for

00:40:03
me that I really wanted to learn to cave dive and I actually

00:40:06
stopped writing the book. I turned, I was turning the show

00:40:10
into a book. And I actually paused right in the book for

00:40:14
about four or five months to go and learn to cave dive. So the

00:40:19
book is still written as if I hadn't learned to cave dive, I

00:40:22
kind of had to put myself back into a mindset of I haven't done

00:40:25
this yet. But it made a huge difference. And it held up the

00:40:31
finishing of the book by quite a bit. Because I had found

00:40:35
something that I'd always wanted to do my entire life and I was

00:40:38
finally doing it.

00:40:39
Matt Waters: Yeah. And by this time, were you in Mount Gambia,

00:40:43
Josh Richards: I ended up moving to mount Gambia for it. So I

00:40:47
went to Mount Gambier March 2019. For my we call basic cave

00:40:53
entry level cave diving cause through the CDA, it was a week

00:40:57
long. I had already organised a house set afterwards to work on

00:41:03
the book immediately afterwards. And so I kind of I wanted to

00:41:06
stay I really wanted to stick around. I had a series of house

00:41:09
sets after that, and I didn't manage to get back to my Gambia

00:41:12
until the August, at which point I did the level to the cave

00:41:15
rated course. And during that course, got offered a job at the

00:41:20
dive shop that was in Mount Gambier there for a while and

00:41:25
had another house set to go and work on the book again, and then

00:41:28
came back in the October of that year, and started working there

00:41:32
and started living in Mount Gambier, essentially. So, I was

00:41:36
only there for about four months without delving into it too

00:41:41
deeply. That dive shop was pretty, pretty hostile, a very

00:41:45
hostile working environment. And I do not miss it. made some good

00:41:50
friends out of it. But yeah, the management was pretty subpar.

00:41:56
And I escaped in about February, and at the time, my, like, my

00:42:01
partner at the time, ended up nearly dying in a car crash

00:42:04
right before COVID started. So yeah, 2020 was pretty intense.

00:42:10
We I wound up we, yeah, we were broken up but I wound up being

00:42:14
who live in carer for 10 months to sort of help rehabilitate her

00:42:19
through COVID in Melbourne. And then yeah, it wasn't until the

00:42:23
end of 2020 that I moved back out to Mount Gambier properly

00:42:26
and took over the habitat the accommodation for cave divers

00:42:30
out there, which I've now just sold as well. Always like a

00:42:35
hermit crab.

00:42:40
Matt Waters: And let's just bear in mind that we're we've got a

00:42:43
fair few listeners that know nothing about Australia and

00:42:46
Mount Gambier. Can you paint a picture of kind of see and what

00:42:49
it's like down there,

00:42:49
Josh Richards: short version, Mount Gambia probably looks and

00:42:53
feels a lot like the West Country of the UK. So it's

00:42:57
actually not doesn't feel dissimilar from where I was with

00:43:01
the Royal Marines around lympstone and Exeter and places

00:43:04
like that, rolling countryside, lots of pine forest. And all

00:43:09
that pine forest is there because it's an enormous

00:43:12
limestone cast. So the whole region, it's, it's all

00:43:16
limestone. It's all very soft. The entire area has also been

00:43:20
lifted by volcanic activity. So the most recent sort of volcanic

00:43:24
activity we've had in Australia has lifted that whole region up.

00:43:27
And so we are essentially cave diving through old coral reefs

00:43:33
old sort of compacted what used to be the ocean floor has now

00:43:37
been lifted up by this volcanic activity, the water running

00:43:40
through it has created these caves. And so the whole areas

00:43:44
very lush, very green, gets lots of rain, and has holes open up

00:43:50
in the middle of paddocks all the time or in the middle of

00:43:52
town that then sort of create these opportunities for us to go

00:43:57
diving freshwater cave diving throughout the whole region. So

00:44:01
it's Australia's most extensive freshwater cast system. And it's

00:44:08
probably the highest proportion of little holes, little areas.

00:44:13
It's it's a strange, it's realistically it's Australia's

00:44:15
cave diving sort of hub. It's the capital for cave diving in

00:44:19
the whole region.

00:44:21
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah, that's definitely definitely. And let's

00:44:26
start let's have a little look at a little look. Let's have a

00:44:30
good look at this this dive that has led to you you know, find

00:44:37
him find him okay. Yeah, well, effectively. It's a it's a is it

00:44:42
a completely new covert? It's just a it's an extension.

00:44:46
Josh Richards: Yeah, so the the short version is angle breaks

00:44:48
cave is right in the centre of Mount Gambier. Literally Jubilee

00:44:52
Highway, which runs through the middle of town is right next to

00:44:56
it. There's a little cafe that sits on the top of this cave

00:44:59
opening. And for divers, we talk about angle bricks east and

00:45:03
angle bricks West. It's a central Boleyn. And like I said,

00:45:06
the cafe sits on the top of the doline. And people go down and

00:45:09
they go for a little bit of a drive tour and see all sorts of

00:45:13
different weird and wonderful things. The divers carry their

00:45:15
gear gear down to the water, and you can either go east or west,

00:45:19
people who've been diving both sides for the last probably 3040

00:45:23
years, the western side has always been more extensive. So

00:45:27
it's a bit more complicated. It's a it's a level three, it's

00:45:30
advanced cave. And you've got to squeeze through this little hole

00:45:35
at the start, swim for 7080 metres that pops up into an air

00:45:39
chamber and you can get out climb over the air chamber and

00:45:42
there's a series of tunnels that run off from that as well. If

00:45:46
people make the effort to go and dive at angle bricks, they

00:45:49
generally advanced cave divers and they generally go into West

00:45:52
because it's much more extensive. East has always been

00:45:55
considered a bit of a puddle. So you crawl you walk down this

00:45:59
area, get to the water, climb into the water, there's maybe 30

00:46:04
metres of passage at the most. We've We've joked about it quite

00:46:08
a bit recently that people could pretty much free diver if they

00:46:11
wanted to, they could free dive through. There's another air

00:46:14
chamber on the other side with quite a large rock pile. There's

00:46:18
a bit of a side passage or what round one little area but

00:46:21
realistically, there's maybe 40 metres of passage in engelberg

00:46:27
seats. It has been a place where a lot of Level Two cave divers

00:46:32
have gone because there's only rated for cave, or it was only

00:46:36
rated for cave levels. So quite a few cave divers would go to

00:46:39
the effort of carrying all their gear down there, go and do this

00:46:42
30 metre swim, muck around for a little bit and then come back

00:46:46
and log one of the 25 divers that they need to log as K rated

00:46:50
divers before they can move up to advanced. But generally, it's

00:46:54
a one dive and done. Yeah, I did my level two course in August

00:47:01
2019. And before we went down to angle Brexit just before we went

00:47:06
and jumped in there mate of mine and I, we both recently

00:47:09
certified, chatted to a another diver who sort of mentioned that

00:47:14
there was a bit of a puddle at one end. So once you pop up into

00:47:17
the surface, this is huge rock pile. But if you go and scramble

00:47:21
over the whole rock pile, climb up a series of rocks and climb

00:47:24
down into a hole, you'll find that there's a bit of a pullback

00:47:27
there. So we're like, let's go and check it out. Technically,

00:47:30
we probably weren't qualified like we will get technically

00:47:34
we're entering a second sub, we might have been breaking a few

00:47:36
rules here and there. But it didn't feel seem like much of a

00:47:41
big problem. And I know the rules have changed since then.

00:47:44
So it wasn't it's not a problem now, but at the time, we were

00:47:46
sort of like, Oh, we're not sure if we're doing the right thing

00:47:49
here. We climbed over all these rocks carrying cylinders. It's

00:47:53
like this is deeply unpleasant, climbed down into this hole,

00:47:57
I've got into a war and realistically the puddle that we

00:48:01
got into would probably be about the size of my office here. So

00:48:06
maybe, I don't know, maybe five or six metres wide and maybe

00:48:11
sort of eight, nine metres long. And probably only two or three

00:48:16
metres deep. We jumped in there went Yep, this is a bit of an

00:48:20
adventure swam around. And as we're swimming around, I I'd

00:48:23
read a little bit about how some of the caves on the Nullarbor

00:48:27
had been sort of extensions had been found by people looking at

00:48:31
holes in the roof. So rather than looking down for leads and

00:48:35
looking sideways for leads looking up, and so I sort of

00:48:38
shine my light up and it bounced off a reflection, suddenly saw

00:48:42
this mirror, bounce off the roof. I'm like what the hell is

00:48:45
that swam over to her, and it was a surface. So we popped up,

00:48:49
put her head through and shone a light and climbed up onto this

00:48:52
sort of this beachy type area and shone a light through could

00:48:56
see beyond that there was a muddy room and there was a bit

00:48:59
more water in one corner and a few other things. It was a

00:49:01
nasty, dry squeeze, like it was ugly to go through there. So we

00:49:05
sort of had a look. We're in dry suits and went, you know what,

00:49:08
this is enough adventure for today. Let's go. But I got a bee

00:49:12
in my bonnet about it. I sort of went now there's something else

00:49:15
back there. And Maddie and I sort of went back a few days

00:49:19
later we took wetsuits, we went back to the same place squeezed

00:49:22
through, got into this muddy room at the back. There was

00:49:27
quite a large puddle in one corner. And I sort of looked at

00:49:30
it and went I'm gonna go through that, put the gear back on,

00:49:33
wriggled through this ugly, ugly hole and popped up and found

00:49:39
essentially a series of sumps on the other side and went holy

00:49:42
crap. This is amazing. Like we've definitely found something

00:49:45
bizarre back here like I don't know, this is not on the maps.

00:49:48
This is very new. We don't know what this is very, very cool. It

00:49:53
was what December 2019. Matt ended up getting a job with the

00:49:58
Antarctic Division so He's actually down in Antarctica has

00:50:01
been down in Antarctica for the last 15 months. I've kept going

00:50:05
with the diving but obviously COVID has happened a bunch of

00:50:08
different things happen. So it wasn't realistically until

00:50:10
maybe, or mid 2020 that I actually got back in there to

00:50:16
have a second look and have a look at it properly. I'd gone

00:50:21
through a pool. So once we've gone through that ugly little

00:50:23
hole, there was a pool on the other side. And I sort of went,

00:50:26
Oh, this is pretty cool. There's another pool back here. Didn't

00:50:29
give it a whole lot of thought because I thought I know there's

00:50:31
a series of sumps let's keep following the sumps. And when I

00:50:35
got back in May 2020, I kind of dislodged a bit of silt, I

00:50:40
dragged my fin through a dislodged a bit of silt, and I

00:50:43
just laid on the surface of this lake and watch the silt roll

00:50:46
down and went, Oh, that's really pretty. And as I'm watching the

00:50:48
silt rolling down this hill, suddenly it whips away to the

00:50:51
right hand side and completely the wrong direction. And I'll go

00:50:54
Ward is that and I've swum down and essentially found the start

00:50:59
of what we now know is the angle breaks extension. So it was the

00:51:02
start of Yeah, so far, we've laid a bit over 400 metres of

00:51:07
line in the new tunnel, and it just keeps going. Like it just

00:51:10
keeps extending in all different directions. The cave is

00:51:14
completely hooked back around on itself. We talked about Engel

00:51:17
bricks East so it's heading you know, on a South East line, but

00:51:20
this thing is actually hooked all the way back to go west

00:51:23
again. There's a branch that then heads almost directly south

00:51:26
like and it breaks off in two different directions. Like

00:51:28
there's Yeah, it's a spider web. We always knew there was a

00:51:31
spiderweb network of caves under Mount Gambier. We just weren't

00:51:35
expecting it to be at the back of this crappy little puddle

00:51:38
that people have been ignoring for last 40 years. So it's, it's

00:51:43
pretty exciting to be involved in this definitely more to be

00:51:45
discovered. The logistics of getting there as the challenge

00:51:49
for a lot of people carrying gear over rock piles dragging

00:51:54
things in. It feels like more of a Nullarbor dive than it does a

00:51:58
normal Mac Gambia dive normally Mount Gambier, you pull up

00:52:01
somewhere, put your gear on, get in the water, go for a dive.

00:52:05
This is put your gear on, drag it down seven flights of stairs,

00:52:09
go through some water, drag it over a 70 metre rock pile, get

00:52:13
into some more water, drag it through more dry cave, drag it

00:52:16
through a god awful hole that I've had a friend nearly drown

00:52:19
in to then then start the dive. So the logistics of getting in

00:52:26
there as is hard and quite dangerous at times have been

00:52:29
quite dangerous at times. But we've it's certainly a lot safer

00:52:33
than it used to be. Just from traffic, people actually going

00:52:37
in and out of there. It's sort of smoothed off some of those

00:52:39
really jagged rocks, and it's made it a lot safer. But it's

00:52:43
still very difficult to get in there. It's not a cave, that's

00:52:46
gonna get a lot of traffic, but it's probably the most exciting

00:52:49
area of development that we've got in Mac Gambia and have had

00:52:53
for a long time.

00:52:55
Matt Waters: And you say it's, you know, it's quite

00:52:58
restrictive. I'm assuming that someone my size, it would

00:53:00
probably be a no no.

00:53:02
Josh Richards: It depends so it's interesting. We we've had a

00:53:05
few different folks at different sizes go through okay, I've got

00:53:09
a mate who is recently become advanced cave. So they've

00:53:13
they've changed the rating for the cave, the the entrance part,

00:53:17
the part that everyone has known about for years and years

00:53:19
remains level two remains cave rated, but the extension has

00:53:23
been made level three. And it's going to be interesting. We've

00:53:27
got a mate coming back hopefully soon. He's just done his level

00:53:31
three courses advanced cave course. And he's huge like

00:53:35
Dave's Dave's a big boys six foot two. He's not he's not

00:53:38
heavy. He's not fat. Let's say that. He is He works out like

00:53:44
he's a big lad. I will be very interested to see how Dave goes

00:53:48
getting through that hole. The biggest thing that we've noticed

00:53:52
with it, it's it's been made more difficult going in and out

00:53:56
of there by carrying cylinders. Me being a little gremlin the

00:54:00
way that I am. I've just been going straight through so I've

00:54:03
kept my rig on I've kept my cylinders on and I've like

00:54:06
hassled through I've had a mate who's a bit tall and he still is

00:54:10
very lean. He's tried to squeeze through with these cylinders on

00:54:15
feet first and he's the one that we ended up holding his head out

00:54:18
of the water there's a puddle of water that he nearly got himself

00:54:20
stuck in. So taking cylinders off makes that whole process a

00:54:26
lot easier and safer. And that's the big thing that we're

00:54:28
encouraging people to do now anytime they go and do it don't

00:54:32
do what I do on the videos take the cylinders off wriggle

00:54:38
through and then as a team pass the cylinders through it's just

00:54:42
I know that particular restriction well enough and I'm

00:54:45
small enough that I can just rego through with the cylinder

00:54:48
still on but pretty much every one that goes through now we get

00:54:51
them to take them off.

00:54:53
Matt Waters: Yeah, and this whole process you know when once

00:54:56
you found it did you apart from the obvious LH And that would be

00:55:00
going on? Did you decide to keep it a bit of a secret? Or were

00:55:03
you kind of jump out the hole? Again? I guess? Well, we've

00:55:06
Josh Richards: got, we had to be careful. I'm a very open, open

00:55:09
kind of person, like I want to, when I find anything I want to

00:55:13
share anything I'm excited about, I desperately want to

00:55:16
share it. We had to be really careful, primarily because the

00:55:21
site was cave rated. But the part that we'd found that it was

00:55:26
level two rated, the section that we'd found was advanced

00:55:30
sidemount like it was, there were areas in there that were

00:55:34
incredibly tight. For much further into the cave, there's a

00:55:39
there's a restriction that we call the dormouse. And there's

00:55:43
literally two of us that have ever been through it. And it's

00:55:46
me and Ryan cash kowski and Ryan's like world renowned cave

00:55:49
Explorer, and Ryan has turned around me and gone make that

00:55:53
thing's a bit tight. Like, yeah, it's a pretty, it is a very ugly

00:55:59
restriction. And there's others through the whole area that

00:56:04
yeah, they they feel unstable, or they feel very complex,

00:56:08
there's some there's some really nasty restrictions through it.

00:56:11
So what we've discovered, definitely an advanced cave,

00:56:15
also complicated by the sort of the cave diving politics in the

00:56:21
this is in the middle of town, it's not just some hole out in

00:56:23
the Nullarbor somewhere that, you know, folks from different

00:56:26
places can get approval to it's literally under the streets of

00:56:29
Mount Gambia. So it was quite a complex kind of political

00:56:35
situation for the cave divers Association, in particular, of

00:56:39
how do we navigate this? How do we negotiate with Matt, Gambia

00:56:43
City Council? How do we navigate with the cafe owner? How do we

00:56:46
navigate with all these different parties, because we've

00:56:49
made this major discovery in a cave that folks had been sort of

00:56:53
realistically ignoring for last 40 years. So I didn't want to

00:56:58
keep it secret. I also had to make sure that I didn't sort of,

00:57:03
in the process upset the wrong people. I'm, I'm a newbie, I'm a

00:57:07
new guy like, and to have a new guy come in and suddenly find

00:57:11
this big new cave was definitely going to upset a few folks. So I

00:57:17
had to tread really carefully there for quite a long time. So

00:57:20
even though we made these sort of major discoveries back, sort

00:57:23
of, you know, early 2021, mid 2021. It's only just recently it

00:57:29
was only at the cave divers Association AGM November 5, that

00:57:34
we actually went public with it. i For folks who came along to Oz

00:57:38
Tech, I gave him a teaser of it, I gave him quite a substantial

00:57:41
teaser, and any cave diver that has dived angle breaks, I knew

00:57:45
exactly where we were. But I didn't name it. Because I'd sort

00:57:49
of I'd made a promise that we would keep it under wraps so

00:57:52
that we could control the information and the CDA could

00:57:55
put in control measures to make sure that inexperienced divers

00:58:00
didn't go and try and attempt this thing. There were a couple

00:58:02
of folks we were particularly concerned about who very, very

00:58:09
talented, dry cavers, very talented and very experienced in

00:58:13
a lot different areas, but not necessarily experienced cave

00:58:16
divers. And there was a real concern that some of those folks

00:58:20
would have one look at the dry cave section and go, that's

00:58:24
easy, we will knock that out and then get themselves in some

00:58:27
really dangerous trouble later on underwater. And yet, the

00:58:35
information hadn't been shared effectively. Rescue plans

00:58:38
haven't been put in place. There's all these different

00:58:40
things that we needed to put in place to try and protect people.

00:58:43
So yeah, I had to stay cagey about it for quite a long time,

00:58:45
which I hated. But it's lovely. It's wonderful to now be able to

00:58:49
share it with people and encourage people to go there

00:58:52
folks who are qualified to do it, go there and find more stuff

00:58:55
because there's more cave to be found. It's not my cave at all.

00:59:00
It's super exciting that other folks are going in there and

00:59:02
looking themselves.

00:59:05
Matt Waters: Well, it's not your code, but I think it's quite

00:59:06
safe to say that your name stamped.

00:59:10
Josh Richards: Yeah, I think there's going to be some sort of

00:59:12
association and the but again, a bit like the mouse stuff. That's

00:59:15
not my thing. I don't care about my name going down in in history

00:59:20
books or anything like that. I care about us discovering more

00:59:22
cool stuff. So I'm much more excited about the discoveries

00:59:26
that have come that will come from the angle Brexit extension

00:59:30
when other people go in there and find more stuff. I still

00:59:33
really strongly believe that there's more tunnels to be found

00:59:37
and that tunnel will potentially connect up to a cave that's

00:59:40
right in the centre of town like right next to the library, the

00:59:44
cave Gardens, which is about a kilometre away from Engel bricks

00:59:47
on a South East Line. I still strongly suspect that those two

00:59:52
caves are connected. So I would love for someone to come along

00:59:56
and prove that right to go and find the connection between the

00:59:59
two

01:00:00
Matt Waters: Well, I think Stephen Fordyce might listen. If

01:00:04
he's not been there already.

01:00:07
Josh Richards: He tends to go a lot colder. Wow. I shouldn't say

01:00:09
a lot colder. Fordyce was here not that long ago actually we

01:00:13
had a good chat about survey and all those sort of things. And he

01:00:18
has definitely got his work cut out for him in Tasmania. He's

01:00:22
got so much work down there that he needs to do. So I'm sure he'd

01:00:26
love to go and check out the the extension. But I know he's Yeah,

01:00:30
I know. He's pretty focused down in Tassie.

01:00:33
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah. Hey, how we mentioned previous when

01:00:38
we were talking about the scientific aspects of this find

01:00:42
what's what's, what's the, what's going to come out of that.

01:00:45
Josh Richards: So the big thing, I suppose that came out of all

01:00:48
of this, the initial discovery, talking about me and Maddie

01:00:51
Haysbert going and finding this puddle, blah, blah. That was one

01:00:55
thing, what was really interesting to come out of all

01:00:57
of it was the survey. So I had a bit of time during COVID, to

01:01:03
during 2020 do a bit of research, I couldn't dive these

01:01:06
places. But I could look up as much information as possible, I

01:01:09
ended up getting myself a survey tool, one of them and emos that

01:01:12
allowed me to start surveying some of this stuff. So as soon

01:01:15
as I got back to my Gambia, that became the survey project. So I

01:01:18
started trying to do as much survey as possible. And looking

01:01:21
at angle brex. East was particularly interesting,

01:01:24
because I knew about this series of sumps, I knew that we'd found

01:01:26
at the end of 2019. And looking at it, and using the survey

01:01:31
data, it became really clear that what we'd actually found

01:01:35
was a fissure line. So it was split, because the whole area

01:01:39
has been lifted by volcanic action. There's all this fissure

01:01:41
lines that run across it. And in that particular part of of the

01:01:45
region, all the fissure lines run sort of SES, they run on

01:01:49
about 140 degrees. So we'd looked into it. And this angle

01:01:54
bricks, fissure that we'd found was running once again at 140

01:01:58
degrees. So we were thinking, Okay, we need to push that line

01:02:01
we need to keep following along there. And that's why when I

01:02:04
sort of I went back in initially, I was following the

01:02:07
sumps and kept trying to pursue this 140 degree line. What I

01:02:12
hadn't realised and it took a bit more research and

01:02:15
conversations with people like Ian Lewis. We call him cave,

01:02:20
Santis. He's a cave diving geologist. And he's, yeah, Ian's

01:02:25
incredible, like Louie has been doing stuff for so long. And

01:02:30
understands the shapes of the cave, so chatting to him.

01:02:34
chatting to him was really interesting to sort of discover,

01:02:37
you've got all these lines, but you've also got cross fractures

01:02:40
that connect them. And if you go and look at something like tank

01:02:43
cave, which is what everyone comes to now Gambia to dive, you

01:02:46
know, more than eight kilometres of passage, it's got all these

01:02:49
visual lines that you dive along, but there's also cross

01:02:52
fractures that connect that those tunnels together. And what

01:02:55
I actually found in Ingo bricks, we found the the initial fissure

01:02:59
line, but when I said the Silk Road the wrong way, it went off

01:03:03
to the right hand side, what we'd actually found was across

01:03:05
fracture, and the rooms that we found from there are still on

01:03:10
that 140 degrees, but they're running parallel to the initial

01:03:14
fracture line that we're on. So for me, I suppose out of all of

01:03:17
this, it's come back to the science backgrounds come back to

01:03:20
my physics degree, looking at all this stuff and going, Okay,

01:03:24
what is the cave actually doing? Don't get too bogged down in the

01:03:28
geology, look at the fracture lines, look at the over

01:03:31
overreaching patterns, where should we be checking? And I

01:03:36
suppose trying to apply a bit of a science to cave exploration

01:03:39
rather than, rather than just sort of going at it willy nilly.

01:03:43
I reckon I've got a feeling that there's something that there's a

01:03:46
lot of that that happens amongst the folks who do cave

01:03:49
exploration. And more often than not, they're not wrong. But it

01:03:54
feels a bit woolly. To me, it feels like a black art of being

01:03:57
like, oh, you know, someone's who can sniff out a cave, right?

01:04:01
Or it's like, I worked in, I worked in the mining industry as

01:04:05
a blaster for a while. And there was a lot of that as well. It's

01:04:09
like, oh, you know, it's blastings a black art. I was

01:04:11
like, it's not it's literally physics like we can, we can

01:04:15
physics this out. And I've kind of come at cave diving in much

01:04:20
the same way. It's like, yes, the cave does unusual,

01:04:23
unexpected things. But there are overreaching patterns here that

01:04:26
we can look for. And if we collect data, if we create

01:04:30
survey maps, if we look at overlays, we do all those sort

01:04:33
of things, we can see those overlaying things. My big thing

01:04:36
is about trying to connect caves, you know, this one is

01:04:39
close to this one. And we know that this one goes roughly this

01:04:42
way. So where's the connection? And where should we be looking

01:04:46
for a connection between the two and originally my interest in

01:04:49
survey came from trying to connect pines cave to stinging

01:04:52
nettle there. We know that they're very close to where they

01:04:55
are very, very close to each other. We know that pines cave

01:04:58
gets within about six He metres of the stinging nettle darling.

01:05:02
So I was trying to find a way to connect the two, by surveying

01:05:06
them and finding out which lead we should pursue and all those

01:05:09
sorts of things, we still haven't found the connection

01:05:12
between the two. But that's where the interest started from,

01:05:15
and applying that sort of scientific approach to it, look

01:05:19
at the data, and then be able to figure things out, we've made

01:05:23
discoveries in pines cave, not the ones that we wanted. But

01:05:25
we've made other discoveries in pines cave that people have been

01:05:28
sort of hypothesising, about for 2030 years, our we've managed to

01:05:34
prove it in a dive, we sort of went, Oh, you know, we think the

01:05:38
White Room is connected to the wedge room, let's go and find

01:05:40
out, we survey it. And sure enough, the dots are within half

01:05:43
a metre of each other. So you go down there, find a hole between

01:05:46
the two, and you pass a GoPro through it, and you prove the

01:05:48
connection between the two. So it's about I suppose, collecting

01:05:53
data, analysing that data, making theories out of it. And

01:05:58
then testing those theories, which is at its heart, it's that

01:06:01
science at its core.

01:06:03
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it helps having this this

01:06:06
kind of, I would assume a new set of eyes looking at it, you

01:06:11
know, it's,

01:06:11
Josh Richards: it's a really big challenge. Yeah. It's one of the

01:06:14
things that I've chatted to Ryan cash kowski, about quite a bit.

01:06:17
He's sort of said, it's nice. Because I am relatively new.

01:06:21
I've only been out this comparatively to other folks.

01:06:23
I've only been at this for three years or so. Having fresh eyes

01:06:28
fresh perspective makes a big difference. And it's been

01:06:31
wonderful diving with someone like Ryan, who I suppose he

01:06:35
looks at things a particular way. And he, he does things

01:06:39
quite intuitively. And I sort of go, Oh, why do you do that? And

01:06:43
he goes, Well, that's, that's just what you do. And I sort of

01:06:45
go, Oh, that's not what I do. And we don't compete with each

01:06:49
other. We run sort of parallel, and I see things that he

01:06:53
doesn't, and he sees things that I don't. And that's been

01:06:56
wonderful having that sort of that dual view of certain

01:06:59
places. Again, Ryan's one of the Ryan Ryan is the only other

01:07:04
person that has been to the far reaches of the Engel brex

01:07:08
extension so far. And he's seen things. And he's seen leads that

01:07:13
I completely missed. And I've seen other I've followed and

01:07:17
laid line in different areas that he didn't even notice was

01:07:20
there. So if you've got that perspective, and again, more

01:07:24
eyes on it, that's why I'm really excited about other

01:07:26
people diving this cave, because it will mean more eyes, more

01:07:29
perspectives, and more opportunities for people to

01:07:32
discover more so.

01:07:35
Matt Waters: And have you kind of slowed up going in there yet?

01:07:38
Are you still just hanging back in there as often as

01:07:41
Josh Richards: I have slowed right back. It was pretty

01:07:46
intense and selling selling the accommodation was a really big

01:07:49
one for me. So living in that Gambia was a bit much. I had

01:07:55
people staying with me all the time, wanting me to dive with

01:07:58
them. And I kind of fell into that mentoring role that I

01:08:00
talked about where I would go and dive with people to develop

01:08:03
their skills, and not necessarily be doing the diets

01:08:06
that I wanted to be doing. Now that I've moved up to Adelaide,

01:08:10
I'm getting into different work, I've gone back to study, I'm

01:08:13
doing a few different things. And it means those times that I

01:08:16
do go down to mount Gambia, they are much more intense. It's not

01:08:20
a we're going to sort of, you know, do you want to go for a

01:08:22
dive on and really feel like it. I'm going to watch such and such

01:08:25
it's like, no, no, we're here for a week. And this is the hit

01:08:29
list. This is where we're going to go I want to go and check out

01:08:31
this lead. I want to go and do this. I want to do that. Not

01:08:35
everyone is up for the challenge of Engel bricks extension. But

01:08:41
for the folks that I trust that I do want to do that with, we

01:08:45
organise time. So I'm actually heading back down in about three

01:08:50
well, it over two weeks to meet up with Martin Slater who

01:08:53
months, one of the key drivers for mapping and exploring the

01:08:58
extension. Martin and I are going to meet up, we're mainly

01:09:01
focused on some other stuff that we want to check out in tank

01:09:04
cave. But we will also go back to the extension and see if

01:09:09
there's see if there's some things that we've missed. Now

01:09:13
that it's surveyed, and it's been sort of mapped out, I

01:09:15
suppose. We're a little bit hesitant to go back in, but with

01:09:20
a bit of time away from it. It'll be interesting to sort of

01:09:22
go you know what I do really want to go and check out that

01:09:24
little thing that was over on that side. I only looked at it

01:09:27
once. I reckon there might be something there. And even if we

01:09:30
waste an entire dive following a lead that goes nowhere, at least

01:09:34
we can cross that lead off off the list. So yeah, it's made

01:09:38
it's much more robust. Yeah, yeah.

01:09:42
Matt Waters: Okay, and what's the what's the move up to

01:09:45
Adelaide lead into what's what's going on at there?

01:09:47
Josh Richards: Ah, well, well, my my partners up here. So Chloe

01:09:51
Reed, who was again key to discovering angle bricks.

01:09:55
Extension. It's her it's her face that's on the on the ABC

01:10:00
Have a photo

01:10:02
Matt Waters: wasn't I might be wrong, but isn't there a video

01:10:06
or YouTube or Facebook or whatever it was, but there's a

01:10:08
you like laughing your tips off at her trying to come through?

01:10:11
Josh Richards: Oh, yes, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that's I was

01:10:14
describing that area before I sort of said that we, Matt and I

01:10:18
came off a bit of a beach, squeeze through some dry cave

01:10:21
into a muddy room. So that's footage of Simon Backman. And I

01:10:26
being in that muddy room. And Chloe squeezing through that

01:10:29
area into the mud room. And just off to the left hand side of the

01:10:33
screen is the rabbit hole is that nasty little hole that we

01:10:35
talked about? Yeah, so we shared a bit of footage. It was a bit

01:10:40
of a that was a bit of a taste tester. We folks knew we were up

01:10:45
to something they didn't know where we're up to it. But they

01:10:48
knew we were up to something and showing dry cave people in dry

01:10:52
suits. But dry cave in Mount Gambier. That's very uncommon.

01:10:57
So that video was interesting a for a laugh to sort of take the

01:11:01
piss out of Chloe, which we all love. But also an opportunity to

01:11:06
share an area that people didn't recognise people didn't know.

01:11:10
And see if folks picked up on the fact that we are in, we're

01:11:14
in dry suits in a dry cave somewhere that they didn't

01:11:17
recognise so but no, Chloe's Chloe is an ICU nurse up here in

01:11:22
Adelaide. And we've been doing long distance for far, far, far,

01:11:28
far too long. And with the sale of the habitat, it was like not,

01:11:32
this is the easy thing to do. I have got a lot of things, I've

01:11:37
got books I want to work on. I'm studying cybersecurity at the

01:11:40
moment, I'm doing a whole raft different things. And Mac Gambia

01:11:43
is not the right place for that. And we're also five hours closer

01:11:48
to the Nullarbor. So I'm not planning a trip for another four

01:11:53
or five months, we'll probably look at going out March, April.

01:11:57
But it does cut down the time considerably. And when I've done

01:12:00
Nullarbor trips in the past, rather than leaving from out

01:12:03
Gambia, I leave from Mount mount Lee from the mount, come up to

01:12:06
the Adelaide up here, stay with Chloe for the night, and would

01:12:11
then go on now, I'm already, like I said, five hours closer.

01:12:15
So instead of it being a 24 hour trip, it's now an 18 hour trip.

01:12:18
So it will make your exploration on Nullabor. A lot easier.

01:12:25
Matt Waters: For one for one. And did you say that you're

01:12:28
writing books again?

01:12:29
Josh Richards: I'm trying to Yeah, so I've got there's

01:12:32
probably half a dozen different ideas brewing in the background.

01:12:35
But there's two or three key ones. I've always wanted to

01:12:39
write a book about at about why people think they've been

01:12:43
abducted, why we have like, programmes searching for

01:12:47
extraterrestrial intelligence, the Navy, the US Navy videos

01:12:53
that they put out with like these things buzzing around all

01:12:55
that sort of stuff. Aliens fascinate people. And I suppose

01:13:01
I'm a bit of a scientific storyteller. That's always been

01:13:04
the way that I present myself. And so being able to talk about

01:13:08
the science and the but not be a jerk about it. It's kind of I

01:13:14
don't I don't want to be one of those, those sceptics who are

01:13:18
like, Oh, that's nonsense, and blow everything out of the

01:13:20
water. But I still want to be able to talk about the realities

01:13:24
of like, Hey, this is a little too far out there. This thing's

01:13:27
not realistic because of such and such. But what about this

01:13:30
other crazy stuff over here? Hey, isn't this an amazingly

01:13:34
cool thing over here instead, so I don't want to shut down folks

01:13:39
stories about being abducted by aliens. But there's Yeah. And

01:13:44
without delving into it too deeply. There's an interesting

01:13:47
parallel, Carl Sagan wrote about this quite a bit in one of his

01:13:51
last books, demon haunted world talking about how the number of

01:13:55
demonic possessions that were reported dropped at the same

01:13:58
rate that alien abductions came up. And it actually comes back

01:14:02
to a far more interesting thing talking about sleep paralysis

01:14:05
and night terrors. And people experiencing things like that.

01:14:10
And it feeling like an out of body experience. So being able

01:14:16
to write a book about that would be really, really interesting.

01:14:17
I've had that on the cards for quite a few years. And I'd love

01:14:21
to delve into something that's sort of parallel, I suppose,

01:14:24
talking about our relationship with reality, our relationship

01:14:28
with death, all those sorts of things as well. So yeah, I love

01:14:32
talking about philosophy. And I love trying to make it as funny

01:14:35
as possible, while also getting as many sort of facts in there

01:14:39
as possible.

01:14:42
Matt Waters: Yeah, yeah. It sounds like you've got your work

01:14:45
cut out for you.

01:14:46
Josh Richards: Oh, yeah. That's a long work list.

01:14:51
Matt Waters: Yeah, that's it. I'm just thinking there's a

01:14:53
there's a lady coming on the show in in the new year. Karen

01:14:56
Hoffman and she She effectively take scientific research papers

01:15:03
and make sense of them so that Domestos like myself can

01:15:06
understand that awesome. Yeah, maybe I would go with that as

01:15:11
well, while you're doing the other 6 million.

01:15:12
Josh Richards: Yeah, what realistically, that's, that's

01:15:14
what I was always trying to do with comedy. That was the goal

01:15:17
was to try and take a hard science and things academic

01:15:22
papers that were weren't accessible to people and put

01:15:25
them in terms that folks would relate to and and understand one

01:15:30
of my favourite ones, I talked about the Drake equation, which

01:15:34
is an equation that's used for calculating the probability that

01:15:37
there's other intelligent civilizations that we can

01:15:39
communicate with in the Milky Way. And I basically sort of

01:15:45
spilled the whole thing out and everyone obviously in the

01:15:47
audience has gotten the what is that? I went, it's fine, guys.

01:15:50
This is just like Tinder, and broke it down into like, here's

01:15:53
your search radius, these are the things these are the

01:15:56
attributes that you're looking for. This is the age range. And

01:15:59
realistically, the Drake equation works the same way that

01:16:02
Tinder does. And people could relate to that. So that's always

01:16:06
been the challenge for me is to try and make science I suppose

01:16:09
relatable, these things are really interesting and call. But

01:16:13
people sort of get overwhelmed by the academic language and the

01:16:18
the elitism that we see. I could never be an academic. I couldn't

01:16:22
fit into a university environment like that, for those

01:16:26
same reasons, but the stuff that they're researching and doing is

01:16:29
really, really cool. So why not try and make it more accessible

01:16:32
for people?

01:16:34
Matt Waters: Yeah, good call. I wish you well with that. Thank

01:16:37
you, Josh. It's been absolutely fantastic talking to you, buddy.

01:16:42
And learning about your crazy life so far. And I look forward

01:16:46
to so much more out of your no pressure, but you know, you've

01:16:51
got

01:16:52
Josh Richards: I've set the bar high so far. So thank you so

01:16:57
much for having me on. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk.

01:17:00
Matt Waters: Awesomesauce mate, and, hey, let's speak soon and

01:17:03
have a good Christmas. It's a little bit early, but you know,

01:17:06
it's just a random, I've ordered that. So yeah. Thank you. Good

01:17:12
on you mate. And everyone who's listening, we can throw in

01:17:16
Josh's links in the show notes. So if you want to find out more,

01:17:19
and just head on over there and hit him up. Thanks for

01:17:22
listening. Bye for now.