This is the Friends of History Debating Society. I am John Batchelor in extremely chilly New England.

And I go to Jeremy Zakis in extremely summery New South Wales. We're actually going to attend to the

summer in the whole of the Australian continent, assuming that at some point I'll feel warmer.

Jeremy, it is unusually cold.

Now, this is only my 10th winter living in New England conditions year round. I've visited before. And I know New England has a reputation of being snowy sometimes. This is unusually

heavy snow early on, but the worst of it is the cold.

We're reaching single digits at very early in the morning before the sun shines, you know, before first light.

The wind makes it feel at least much colder.

Sort of like if it's 20, it feels 10 at Fahrenheit.

And there is no ice sheet on top of the snow that's been with us for three weeks now.

But there is ice underneath, so it's not easy walking if you're just casually strolling along. And the cold

has no, there's no break in it. I've asked several days ahead in order to be sunny about this.

The sun does shine, but it doesn't warm anything. Okay, now your turn to make me feel warmer.

Good day, too, Jeremy.

Good day, John. Well, imagine everything you just said, but in reverse. Right now, what's happening is we have warm, warm temperatures. Not too hot quite yet, because remember, we've just come out of unseasonable rain pretty much all up and down the East Coast here. So we've had temperatures around about the 70s and 80s Fahrenheit. So it's actually been apart from the rain and the storms,

really quite pleasant. Now, it's not good news all up and down the coast, though, I might say,

because we have had severe flooding up in Queensland. Here in New South Wales, we've had a lot

of damaging winds at times with the storms.

And over in poor old South Australia, they too have had really damaging winds this week,

which have torn up trees and caused a little bit of damage along the coastal regions.

But coming this next week, what you just described there, John, about the wind

and making it feel a lot colder and a lot more, I guess, dark than it really

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