45. Darlinghurst's AIDS Crisis: Bonus episode with Leigh Boucher and Tamson Pietsch

In this bonus episode, History Lab's Tamson Pietsch speaks with historian Leigh Boucher about the making of Darlinghurst's AIDS Crisis — our three-part History Lab series exploring one of the most intense and concentrated episodes of loss, activism, and community life in Australian history (if you haven't listened yet, go to episodes 42-44 of History Lab).Leigh is an historian based at Macquarie University who has lived in Darlinghurst for years. Walking the streets of the neighbourhood every day, he found himself asking a question the existing histories hadn't quite answered: what did it actually feel like to live in this neighbourhood as the epicentre of an epidemic? The series was his attempt to find out.Here, Leigh describes the tension between oral history practice — open-ended, associative, unhurried — and what podcasting demands.Leigh also reflects on the way his research, his interviewees and the collaborative work of making the podcast were able to complicate the story of how AIDS played out in Australia - zooming in to the local experience, and listening to voices that can help us hold that complexity rather than resolve it.VoicesLeigh Boucher and Tamson Pietsch, presented by Regina Botros.CreditsRecorded by Siobhan Moylan, edited and mixed by Regina Botros.History Lab is a UTS Impact Studios production, in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS.SupportThis series of History Lab was made with the support of the support of the Paul Ramsay Foundation and is part of the Foundation's Darlinghurst Public History Initiative, a collaboration with UTS' Australian Centre for Public History and Impact Studios.Thanks to Macquarie University for its support of this series.A special thanks goes to the staff and management of City Gym, Darlinghurst, for their generous hospitality. Heartfelt thanks also to Anni Turnbull at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney for her time and expertise, and to the Australian Queer Archives.Thanks also to the National Library of Australia, the State Library of New South Wales, ACON and the Pride History Group Sydney.