Good day, humans. Happy festive season. We've done it. We've done it, haven't we? This is it. It's almost the end of 2021. It wasn't as good as we thought it was going to be. At the end of 2020, I think everyone was like, oh, this pandemic has been terrible. And why, am we glad it's over? Vaccines are coming?

Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. A few months will be out of all this.

And then Delta.

And now Omicrom.

But maybe Omicron will be okay.

Look, I'm not going to talk about that again.

I'm going to talk about Bridget Delaney, who's a columnist for The Guardian, Australia.

And is one of those rare people who I love because she's willing to say things that are going to alienate her side of politics or the other side of politics and she's going to say them without fear or favour.

I hadn't realised until we had this conversation that that might partly be due to her fascination with stoicism.

I wanted to talk to Bridget about the Australian experience of the pandemic and lockdowns and human rights

and the overreach of some Australian police and the whole campaign in America about Australia has fallen

and just how to think as we are emerging.

Now I sound like someone who I was just criticising from 12 months ago who was getting

prematurely optimistic about the pandemic being over, but assuming that we are now emerging

from the pandemic, I want us to look back on it with someone who is nonpartisan and assess

Australia's response.

And yet Bridget's so much more interesting than that,

because she does think about sort of how we should want things,

whether we should want things in a stoic sort of Buddhist sense,

how we might find more contemplation in our lives,

and how we might reach across the aisle and understand each

other a little bit more. There are still some questions available for my Ask Me Anything episode,

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