Cyber Journalism, Crisis Comms & the Power of Storytelling

Paul Jackson: Wherever you are in the world. Hello and welcome to THEOS Cybernova podcasts. My name is Paul Jackson, your host. And before we begin, I’ve got a quick favor to ask from you. There’s one simple way that you could support our show, and that’s by hitting the follow or subscribe buttons on the app that you’re listening to the show on right now.

It makes a huge difference in helping to get the show out there to as many people as possible. So please give us a hand and click that button now.

The THEOS Cybernova podcast hosted by Paul Jackson.

So here we are with the second episode of THEOS Cybernova podcast. A couple of first today. Our first female guest is on today, and it’s also our first time to have somebody who’s never worked in the Asia Pacific region. But we will, of course, be touching on, a little bit about, the Asia Pacific region as is normal on this show.

But as usual, each week I’m digging into the latest trends, challenges and innovations shaping the cyber security landscape. Always talking to a fantastic mix of leading industry experts. Thought leaders, legal eagles, technologists and journalists with a particular focus, as I mentioned, on the Asia Pacific region. So whether you’re a professional in the field or simply curious about staying safe in the digital age, we hope THEOS Cybernova will offer up valuable knowledge and actionable insights for everyone.

Paul Jackson: Today, I’m delighted to welcome Kate Fazzini  to the show. Kate is based in the US on the West Coast, and she’s up very early on a Friday morning to talk to me, and I’m here very late on a Friday evening. Kate, thank you so much for joining the show, and thank you so much for joining us so early in the morning.

How are you doing today?

Kate Fazzini: Absolutely. I’m doing great. And, Paul, I’m just, thrilled to be here with you. So Paul and I have been colleagues in the past, and I think the world of you. I love your show.

Paul Jackson: Likewise.

Kate Fazzini: And I am, most pleased to be on. So. Thank you.

Paul Jackson: Yeah. So, Kate, because obviously, I know you. Well, we work together in the past, and we’ve been friends. But how about you tell your audience, you know, a little bit of your career story and your background?

Kate Fazzini: Sure. So, I have a little bit of a diverse background. I started out my career, I mean, going all the way back to. I went to the Ohio State University, where I studied, middle Eastern studies and also English literature. And this was, I’m old now. So this was before nine, 11. And when 911 happened, I ended up getting a job, doing various contracting work. I got to work overseas. I was actually, I worked in China.

I worked, in the Middle East. I worked in Lebanon, northern Lebanon.

Paul Jackson: Pause you there, Kate, you worked at China?

Kate Fazzini: I did, I well, I did, I did a lot of, trips, over there. I specialized in industrial cybersecurity. And so I got to, to our factories and get an idea of, you know, some of the, emerging outfit technology.

Paul Jackson: And, so I got it wrong in the intro. You have spent time in this region?

Kate Fazzini: No, I wouldn’t say. I mean, these were not long trips, so I wouldn’t claim that I worked in the Asia-Pacific region, but I would certainly got it, got to have that international experience. But yeah, I, I’m not correcting you or anything. Okay.

You know, it was it was a short period of time, but I learned a lot I learned to love cyber, as you know, and, ultimately somehow landed at a little, small financial shop called JP Morgan Chase, where we, where we work together. And, I that’s where I continued my, my cybersecurity education.

And, and literally, was  very fortunate because, back then they had that, wonderful, education program where they would reimburse you for, your university degrees. My master’s in cybersecurity while I was there. And after that, I went to a company called Promontory Financial Group, which was a boutique, consultancy that ended up being acquired by IBM.

And then after that, I left, and that was when I went to the Wall Street Journal. I had known reporters for a long time. I had been involved in, like, a lot of freelance journalism. And, and so I covered cybersecurity for the Wall Street Journal. And following that, I went to CNBC.

And since then, I’ve just been a lay about essentially, like, I left CNBC during Covid. I have kids, so I took some time off, and, just, just take on really interesting projects, that come across. The most recent one was with Bloomberg, and it was a podcast series with our mutual friend JF.

Paul Jackson: Jf was actually telling me about that the other day. That he’d been on with you

Kate Fazzini: Does he hate me? I always assume, for whatever reason.

Paul Jackson: Absolutely not. But for those who haven’t ever read, the works of Kate, you know, and I do encourage you because, you know, we’ll talk about her, her published book in a moment, but, on LinkedIn, you can see or on the blog you could see how creative and how good with words.

And I’m really jealous of this, Kate, because although I get invited to speak at a lot of conferences and do chairing panels and obviously now doing this podcast, I’ve never been that good at writing stuff. And when I read your stuff, I’m so envious of the way that you get the words across the way. You know, I can visualize things so easily in the flow of how you communicate.

And it’s a gift. And, as I say, very envious of how you do that.

Kate Fazzini: That’s very kind of you, Paul. And it means a lot to me. I’m, I’m a huge fan of writing. And I love good writing, and it’s a really interesting time. I think for writers I recently wrote about, I feel like we’re really coming into the age of, storytellers having a little bit more power than in the past where you have, you know, there has long been this very dry sort of understanding of technology.

And it would be so rare that you would go into some sort of technology company and there would be someone with a good, way with words and the ability to describe their product, you know?

Paul Jackson: So. Right. So. Right. And, you know, this is one of my bugbears in another podcast. So I’ve actually talked about it is that you could be the best technical person in the world, but if you can’t tell that story, if you can’t make it understandable to business leaders or you know, whoever you’re trying to communicate to, then it’s all for naught, isn’t it really?

Kate Fazzini: Absolutely. I mean, you I think one of the really interesting things, you know, Elon Musk has is such a divisive figure in a lot of ways. But I think, he certainly I mean, he bought Twitter and that was this storytelling platform. And, and you have the fact that he can put out these, you know, when you’re whether you’re talking about DOGE or whatever he’s into, you know, whatever day it is, it’s something different.

But, he has the ability to pick something out of that story and illustrate the problem so he can pick out something that DOGE found, even if it was $8 million to, you know, some, some kind of crazy thing you had never heard of. And that gets the message across to people in a way that, you know, saying we found $500 trillion or something like that doesn’t,, he can do that very well.

And I just see that as something that’s really emerging. Yeah, there are a lot of technologists who can’t do that. So, also with, with artificial intelligence and, I’ve, I’ve worked at it along the way. I taught cybersecurity and cyber warfare at, Georgetown University and Yeshiva University in New York. And I’ve seen the evolution of, you know, AI and the way students do their papers and, and sort of the, the loss of creativity that comes along with this, the AI and I, I just, I don’t see that I have seen very much.

AI generated content and there’s tons of it that gets any kind of meaning across. And maybe I’m wrong, but it’s just seems like there is still room for telling that unique story in this space, I don’t know. What do you think?

Paul Jackson: Well, yes, I agree with you entirely, because, I use AI all the time because I am useless at writing. But now I’ll go back to your blog post it when I reconnected with you just recently, because you did disappear off the map for a little while, didn’t you know? And I don’t know if you want to talk about that, but, you spent time in the desert.

Kate Fazzini: I did, yeah, well, I moved out here from New York. And I actually, I drove from New York to San Diego, California, with my kids. And we did sort of the Wild West, exploration trip. And then. Yeah, I did some, I did some meditating in the desert.

Paul Jackson: Well, it obviously work because the, the writing you’ve produced since then, in the weeks since then, there’s been nothing sort of short of beautiful because I think I told you, didn’t I, that you wrote this post.

And it was a quite a long one and very reflective. And I generally I start reading the first paragraph with most of these kind of articles. That’s about it. That’s about as far as I get. You had me on the hook right from the first by a read it all through. And then I sat down and reread it all again. It was that good. And I tell you now that it’s so rare for me to do that. And so obviously that little break out in the desert and meditating or whatever, you did it, did you some good.

Kate Fazzini: I might just go back, I think.

Paul Jackson: No, please don’t. Or if you do, you take a satellite phone with you.

Kate Fazzini: No. I said we all need to at some point. Right. I think they used to call it a midlife crisis. Now we call it something like self-care.

Paul Jackson: Well, as you’re going through your intro, you mentioned the word old, and I just scribbled it down on the notepad I’ve got next to me. Because if anybody can make anybody feel young, it’s me out here. These days, I do feel I feel it. But let’s not dwell on that. Let’s talk about a few other things, for example. So you’ve obviously been a journalist with elite publications, right? You know, world famous, news, newspapers. But you’ve also done in-house PR work, right? And what the big differences then between, you know, those in, you know, for those who, you know, just working on a career and thinking, you know, I’m good at writing. I’m good at, you know, communicating in a career in cyber communications might be for me. What’s your experiences?

Kate Fazzini: That’s a really interesting question. I think, you know, one of the things, I think the best PR people I’ve worked with have, have been journalists at some point. And this is because you have to understand what the journalist is both up against and nine times out of ten, the journalist is making maybe half what you are.

So the person you’re talking to might have, you know, especially if you’re talking to somebody who’s like from the New York Times or something, they might have more power than you in the sense that they’re going to publish something about your company. But you have to think of your position as not the necessarily weak position. And so when something has happened, you know, they first of all, especially at large publications, journalists do not want to talk to you.

They want to talk to your CISO or your CEO, or they want to talk to somebody who is going to give them, what would be considered the more authentic information. So it’s not the going through your filter. So I think in when it comes to if we’re talking about like a crisis, which I think, we kind of discussed this before we call it on, you know, if you have a breach or something like that, understand that the reporter is going to, not consider you to be the authority on the matter.

And so you get a lot of PR people who, who come into this relationship being a little combative. And, you know, this isn’t true or, you know, I’m going to have to go back and ask somebody. Well, this reporter is poor. They’re on deadline. They have a family to get home to, just like you do, and have the information.

You should have the information ready to go and have your people trained and ready to talk. I, I the companies that I reported on, where a lot of times people because I had a background in the space, they knew me already and I could just call the without having to go through a public relations person.

And, you know, I, I’m sort of I’m sort of rambling a little bit. I’m sorry.

Paul Jackson: Oh, no, it’s fascinating

Kate Fazzini: You know? Okay. But, you know, that there were there were times to when, when you’re working as a journalist, especially covering cybersecurity, you’re expected to talk to CISOs. Yesterday, I had an editor at the Wall Street Journal who would say, like, you know, call 100 of them, like call 100, 200 today to get their opinion on this because one of them might talk to you.

And that’s true. That’s about as far as far as you’ll go. It’s very much like sales in a way. You know, it’s cold calling. It’s I, I will, you know, I can tell this story objectively. I’m not going to make any promises to you because I can’t, I can’t say I’m going to say this or say that because it can get changed.

But, you know, I promise you that I’ll understand what you’re saying. And, you know, can make sense of it. And to get through, you know, the companies that I respected the most and that I still respect the most put me right through to their CISO. And I would get a nervous CISO who maybe had never really spoken directly to a journalist before.

But that’s, you know, much better information than I’m going to get from anybody else. And I think, that’s, you know, if there’s a crisis happening, it’s going to happen at your company and it’s, it’s better to have that transparency, to have your people ready that have everybody ready to be able to, to speak.

Paul Jackson: Well, does that happen very often? No, I doubt it does. Right?

Kate Fazzini: It almost never happens. Never.

Paul Jackson: I get the PR is sometimes the most important thing, isn’t it? Because in a breach, you know that you’re the voice and the face of the company. You know, whether you’re talking to journalists or whether you’re doing, you know, the announcements or whatever over, over social media or over the website or whatever. There’s got to be an art to this, hasn’t there? And it’s got to be a skill and it’s got to be practiced, hasn’t it? There’s got to be, you know, preparation. There’s got to be, readiness and resilience to, to what you’re going to say, right. So, you know, obviously you’ve, you’ve lived through major breaches and, from the for the other side, I mean, what, what are the best strategies for going public early and being transparent?

I mean, is it better to go early and be transparent, or is it best to fly under the radar, get as much information as you can before you go live?

Kate Fazzini: That’s a good question, I think. I think it matters less now than it used to, because there is such a flood of information, that people are a little bit more blind to. Oh, here’s another one. You know, I think with the ransomware, some of the ransomware stories and these a lot of these came out after I left journalism. I thought, you know, what the information about these enormous insurance payments coming out the way that they did is just, so, so bad. I thought that, you know, I certainly know a lot of people in the health care industry, but I thought the United Healthcare incident, was not handled very well.

And it continues to not be handled very well. There’s just not enough information about, what happened. And I think that part of that is because it had so many effects on different companies. I certainly have heard stories I would love to have seen in the public sphere, I will say from people and there’s a saying that, I heard often at the Wall Street Journal, which was the best story I’ve ever worked on, is the one that didn’t get published.

And there are so many stories that don’t get published. Partially because, you know, the standards are much higher, I think, than we realize that we have to have several sources and legal gets involved. All of these things. And but there are there are so many interesting stories that I think would be helpful to people and companies that just didn’t get told out of those breaches that I wish could get out.

I think if you go all the way back to the Target breach, the one that everybody knows about, I can’t remember what year it was now.

Paul Jackson: It was it would have been around 2013, I guess in 2012, 2015, 2012, maybe 2012,

Kate Fazzini: 15 years ago. So the target breach at Home Depot breaches, which happened the Home Depot breach was announced I think shortly after that they happened very close to the same time. Target chose to be radically transparent about it and announce before Christmas, Home Depot made the other decision and waited a little bit. Now they probably made the better decision. Home Depot because Target, as you recall, yes, there were some firings. There was a lot of ton of fallout. You know, if you have any women in your family, and you celebrate Christmas, you know what Christmas is like, I shouldn’t that’s almost sexist.

I mean, a little crazy around Christmas, too, but like, you know, I mean, people are already freaking out, and then they find out their credit card’s been canceled, and all this stuff happens because of Target, and I just, I think that there is a timing issue where releasing certain information might be unhelpful,

Paul Jackson: It’s difficult thought, doesn’t it? I mean, how are you supposed to make that call? You know, right in the onset of a crisis?

Kate Fazzini: It’s true, I mean, and it’s very difficult now, I think that now that the laws have changed and you have a 72 hour or sometimes I think in some jurisdictions an even shorter time period to disclose a breach, that decision has already been made for you.

So you kind of don’t have to think through. Maybe I should wait a week, right? You’re just going to have to go forward with it. But at the same time, it certainly helps if you have comms. People who understand cybersecurity so that when that messaging gets out there, they’re also on the same page.

Paul Jackson: Right. Let’s switch gears a little bit and let’s talk about social media misinformation campaigns, because wow, is this ever a tough one, right? To do with, you know, how do you view this? Because, I mean, some people would say, actually, mainstream media don’t exactly, give you all the facts and, you know, and, and in social media, we’re certainly you know, we’re at the mercy of the algorithms who create these echo chambers of information, which is sometimes misinformation or misguided, or not telling us the full facts, how do we know? How do we ever get this? Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. How are we ever gonna, fix this?

Kate Fazzini: I don’t know that we’ll ever fix it, but I, I think that there’s a couple of different threads there. One of them that comes to mind is that on social media, when it comes to technology in general and cybersecurity specifically, it seems like everything is possible. So you see a lot of speculation about things that are happening with your phone or with breaches or ransomware or insider threats and things like that, that, you and I would know to be kind of a fanciful idea of how talented people are. Really. In this case, the ability to  hack and constantly watch and monitor your every move. It does it exist? Yes. But if you’re not the president of the United States, there’s probably, not too much of a chance of that happening to you.

Now, when it comes to misinformation from like a campaign or something. You know, that’s a foreign government. Obviously we know that these things happen. I think it’s just it’s so difficult to be able to figure out when information is  swarming around.

They tried to do it here with DHS CISA organization, doing some monitoring, but it’s  just such a heavy lift that I think that there’s a technical solution to it, especially when these misinformation campaigns are coming from, similar sources. And there’s, a way to determine whether, you know, certain, talking points or whatever are all, coming together from, you know, another government that then do like then we have to come up with the standards by which we filter that. So there’s so much to happen still.

Paul Jackson: Yeah. No, I, I kind of get that is, is and then that also kind of links in with attribution, you know, as to where not only where misinformation is coming from but where cyber attacks are coming from. And I think we kind of fed a little bit in the media. You know, one side is good, the other side is bad. And  when the good guys do it, it’s for a good reason, right? When they hack, when the bad guys do, of course, bad. You know, it’s like a Hollywood movie, right? And so what, we how should we be portraying this? Because, you know, I pointed you in the direction of an interesting article, which a very rare article, which actually, rather than pointing the fingers that Russia, China, North Korea, you know, etc., etc., it pointed the finger at the US and it was, it was quite an interesting article with lots of evidence and, and it was a bit, but if I am, it caused a bit of well, let’s just say interesting.

Kate Fazzini: Yeah, certainly. I mean, if you go back to World War Two, you know, the UK had an entire division that was devoted to, I’m not going to say planting stories. It makes it sound more insidious than it is. I think we can I think we can all agree that we don’t like Nazis. So they, you know, any Nazi organizations within the United States. There were news work and  they would plant news stories that, you know, called out these various organizations or, you know, this is a there’s been books written about this. And so the, the, the US and our allies have, have always been engaged in the use of information in this way. I think, where, you know, we have this, this famous quote about yelling fire in a crowded theater. And when you look at some of what Russia accomplished, I’m going to go back to 2016 with their online campaigns, where they actually were able to create scenarios where you had, real rallies taking place that had been organized by identities that were, Russian intelligence people who had established identities that made it look like there were some person in Texas or, some person, you know, for, for years, for many years and had thousands or tens of thousands of followers and they would, create these events that happened in person, and people would show up and they would be riled up.

And the themes would be very volatile. And at the same time, if you looked at some of the reporting out of that, you had these very, like extreme left wing organizations. Some of them were sort of like African-American, based in New York, also spun up by Russian intelligence. And so you have this like scenario where you have people fighting each other sometimes in real life, just total chaos on the most extreme sides of things.

So I think preventing chaos in real life and preventing security, like security issues and loss of life in real life is, that should be the priority of that. The rest of it is, you know, countries have been working with propaganda since countries were invented, and it’s we’re never going to yeah, we’re never going to stop that.

Paul Jackson: Attribution on hacks as well as an interesting one, you know, not just about misinformation, but, it’s what I see is that there’s, you know, the newspapers are fed, from whatever government. Well, usually a U.S. agency and it’s printed as gospel with a limited amount of questioning as to whether the evidence is, you know, valid because there’s a lot of uses of words like alleged and, you know, suspected, blah, blah, blah, but the newspapers normally spin it into, reality. So, I mean, obviously at the moment there’s a lot of focus on in our region, China, obviously in North Korea.

And what is the perception of the U.S public, you know, USA over there? I mean, is it just everyone thinks that China and North Korea just constantly hacking the US now as a result of these news articles?

Kate Fazzini: And I think there’s a lot of interesting things that have emerged. And one of them is that, I mean, if I were to criticize journalists, when I don’t have a I don’t have a problem with that. But, it always comes back on you when you do. But I think that there is a limited understanding of the, you know, hacking capabilities of other, other countries in the world. And I see particularly the narrative that you mentioned about North Korea being just this complete juggernaut in the world of hacking and outsized as to what they are capable of doing. Yes. You know, they have capabilities, but what they have more than anything is like, what’s the word? Nothing to lose. They have nothing to lose from this. So I think that the issue that should be, you know, considered is when you have a country that seems to have this sort of outsized, ability. And I think we’ve done I think that the evidence I’ve seen as, as far as the funds coming from North Korea is pretty strong.

There’s a lot of stuff that comes out about China that I don’t think is very strong. And I think that a lot of what and I, I’ve written about this and I wrote about this at, at CNBC, that there, have been several reports from the U.S. intelligence community about China, and particularly Huawei and ZTE, the technology companies having these implicit ties to the Communist government and that everything that they create is a surveillance operation. There are plenty of people who will I will sit down and talk to them, and they will convince me that that’s 100% true. And I’ll listen to it now. But I have I have also listen to people who are on the other side of it. And the one thing that has frustrated me the most is that I have not seen evidence of that, that they have released reports and they say, you know, so much of this stuff is classified. And I’ve had other people say the same thing to me, you know, well, it’s classified. Of course, they can’t tell you why they think Huawei is surveilling everyone. And I’m like, but they can tell me technically what they think is happening. Like, I would like to know where the information is going.

Paul Jackson: It’s a shame you’re not still a journalist. That isn’t it. But these that. You’re right. These are the questions that don’t seem to get asked.

Kate Fazzini: I mean, that’s, you know, I just want you to tell it like. And you can tell me that it’s not like it’s going to change things. Yeah. So, there’s, there’s a, certainly a frustration from, from a lot of people that got you the U.S. government does make these assertions. So that that China is watching you and their equipment is watching you. And, of course, Huawei equipment is all over Europe.

Paul Jackson: It’s all over the world.

Kate Fazzini: And it’s never like it’s my understanding is that it’s very difficult to rip it out and replace it with anything that’s not right. You know, as, as most.

Paul Jackson: Well, let’s switch gears again because, touches of time a little bit here in as we, as we head towards the end of, end of this show, which is been fascinating, by the way, thank you so much for joining us. But I think we’d love to plug your book a little bit. Now, the book is called Him The Kingdom of Lies. Right. Well, it’s got a longer title, but instead says The Kingdom of Lies. What made you want to be an author then? I mean, I know you’re a journalist, so I guess it comes with the territory, right?

Kate Fazzini: But, yeah, I think I wanted I certainly wanted to tell stories, and tell the stories of a lot of what’s in Kingdom of Lies is, is is stuff that was on the cutting room floor, of the Wall Street Journal for, for various reasons. Right. One of them is that I did a lot of interviews with criminals, and I talked with people who either claimed they were criminals or had been indicted and, you know, were legitimately criminal, legitimately criminals, I don’t know.

But, they, you know, have had these wonderful story, these very interesting stories and, and, and stories of being able to sort of have gone either way. So if you’re really good at hacking in general, let’s say, you can you can be a good guy or bad guy and there’s, there’s various roads that you can take to that.

And I thought that I wanted people to be able to see themselves in this world because I certainly experience I’m sure you have people in your life, in your family who, feel like there’s two worlds and it’s like the world they live in and the world of hackers and high technology and all of this kind of wacky mathematical stuff that’s happening.

And it’s  not like that at all. And a lot of these, these people, are just they’re just people kind of muddling their way through life. And, you know, I just want people to have feel it, feel that they have that agency. And it was fun. It was very fun.

Paul Jackson: Yeah. And it hit the number one on the New York bestseller chart, right?

Kate Fazzini: Oh, yeah. Totally. That’s why I know, I so it was it was a bestseller in the UK. I was on the, on some list. Sorry that I’m really bad at this. I’m actually my publisher hates me. I’m. I’m really bad at promoting.

Paul Jackson: Well, let me do it for you. Everybody go out and buy Kingdom of Lies, by Kate Fazzini. It’s a brilliant read. And when’s the next when’s the follow up coming? We’ve been waiting a decade for the follow up.

Kate Fazzini: I know. Well, I think, I do I have a couple of things I’m working on. So there are some pretty exciting projects, that I have underway. And I have been working on something for Rolling Stone. I’m hoping that’s going to publish for Rolling Stone. So. Yeah. So, little interesting. And yet I can’t I can’t plug it yet now because there’s still some investigating to be done. So we’ll see. But, that’s, that’s something that I, you know, big dream of mine to have put together a piece for them. But, you know, the it’s just it was a very interesting experience.

And I got so much support from so many people, along the way. Some I have had some really great mentors. Yeah.

Paul Jackson: Well, I certainly, I mean, I didn’t buy the book, including you, Paul II. Yes, exactly. But I chose how old I. Well, how long ago was I? I was in the U.S. I don’t know if they still sell books. Do they still sell books in the US? You know, those books e-book readers like, is that like a Kindle? Yeah, from Barnes and Noble.

Oh that’s right, they, Yeah, I remember they of Barnes and Noble. They probably don’t sell. Are you? I spent ten years of war since I lived in the US. But you know what I was going to say, was I immediately bought your book on  from Barnes and Noble.

Kate Fazzini: Oh, okay. Oh, good. Hopefully they let you keep it forever. So the book was a bestseller in Poland. That was the one and it was very interesting I did this I so now I’m like, I’m just a huge lover of Poland. I just assume that they’re literally the smartest people on the planet.

Paul Jackson: Why Poland? Why?

Kate Fazzini: Because. Well, there is, some threads that go through Eastern Europe in there and, and one of the primary interviews that I did was with them, a woman in Romania who, was, who, who worked as a social engineer, at a company that did ransomware, early ransomware innovation. And so, that was of interest. But it was really cool to see it in Polish and, yeah, some interviews with that. That was great.

Paul Jackson: All right. Very cool. Well, I’m gonna have to get, you know, I’m gonna have to get you back on the show some in a few months time as well. I’m always I’ve really enjoyed this chat, but do we try keep these around 35 minutes so we just pass that. And I’ve got one more question for you. Because I always ask this of all my guests because I’m a big music lover, right? I have go. So I’m at home at the moment. And in front of me is a big record collection, my vinyl record collection, because I’m old fashioned that way, and I, you know, it’s my way of decompressing.

You go out in the desert, I put a vinyl record on the turntable, and, It’s fine.

Kate Fazzini: It does sound better. You’re absolutely right.

Paul Jackson: It’s a lot easier, that’s for sure. What? What do you listen to, Kate?  What floats your boat?

Kate Fazzini: I’m a huge lover of jam bands and I there’s, maybe you know them. They’re called the Waterboys. An Irish.

Paul Jackson: I do! They’re in my record collection.

Kate Fazzini: Wonderful. I they are my favorites. And they have these wonderful, wonderful live recordings. They’re great for going out in the desert with. So. Yeah, the Waterboys.

Paul Jackson: I didn’t expect that, Kate. That’s great. Oh, wow. Okay I love that. Oh yeah.

Kate Fazzini: That’s they’ve got a wonderful fiddle player.

Paul Jackson: Yes they do, yes they do. And beautiful music. And he’s, he’s also a poet isn’t he.  You know, and especially a lot of his lyrics are fantastic. Yeah. Beautiful stuff. Kate Fazzini thank you so much for being on the show with us. And, you know, I wish you all the best and wish you luck with that upcoming article. I’ll be following. You know what? It’s all about. You got made very mysterious, rolling Stone. Right? Okay. Very curious.

Kate Fazzini: Hopefully we’ll see.

Paul Jackson: We will see. Okay. Well, thank you very much. It’s been a real pleasure.

Kate Fazzini: Thank you. Paul. Thank you. It’s my pleasure. It’s wonderful to see you again,

Paul Jackson: THEOS Cybernova was presented by myself, Paul Jackson, the studio engineer and editor was Roy D’Monte. The executive producer was myself and Ian Carless, And this podcast is a co-production between THEOS Cyber and W4 Podcast Studio.

The THEOS Cybernova podcast.