PODCAST · news
Like I'm A Six-Year-Old
by Tom Ballard
Comedian Tom Ballard sits down with interesting and passionate people to find out what they do and what they believe in. It's kind of like Kitchen Cabinet except Tom can't cook.
Episodes
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265 - Goodbye
Oh hello. As the title suggests, this is my little way of letting you know that I'm wrapping up Like I'm A Six-Year-Old once and for all. I've loved doing it - and thanks so much for listening to it and supporting it over the years! Bloody hell! - but I feel like after eight years, hundreds of...
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264 - Ben Abbatangelo
Ben Abbatangelo is a proud Gunaikurnai and Wotjobaluk man and a social commentator. He's the former deputy CEO of global non-profit AIME, has appeared regularly on The Project and the ABC and has written for The Guardian and The Saturday Paper. Based on some of his recent work, I've sensed that...
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263 - Larissa Baldwin-Roberts
Larissa Baldwin-Roberts is a proud Widjabul Wia-bal woman from the Bundjalung Nations and has been a progressive activist since forever. She's a co-founder of the First Nations climate pressure group SEED Mob and is the current CEO of GetUp!. In this conversation I ask Larissa about where her...
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262 - Professor John Quiggin
John Quiggin is a widely-respected economist and professor at the University of Queensland. He's a former member of the Australian Government's Climate Change Authority, and he's written widely about the scourge of neoliberalism and privatisation. I wanted to get John on the show to discuss the...
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261 - Alison Pennington Returns
She's back! Economist, comrade and now author Alison Pennington returns to the show to discuss her debut book Gen F'ed? How Young Australians Can Reclaim Their Uncertain Futures. We discuss how all the good jobs disappeared, our massively cooked housing market, replacing intergenerational warfare...
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260 - "I, Millennial" Event LIVE in Warrnambool
This week's episode brings you the conversation I had with some other generational voices at a live event at the public library in my home town, Warrnambool. Alongside Zoomer and journalist Sharna Rogers, Xer and psychologist Dr. Jodie Fleming and Baby Boomer and celebrated aid worker Bob Handby...
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259 - Polly Hemming
Polly Hemming is a Senior Researcher at The Australia Institute's Climate & Energy Program. Just this week she was giving evidence to a Parliamentary committee on the Labor Party's signature climate policy, the "Safeguard Mechanism" - which, I'm sorry to say, stinks. It stinks real bad. Here…
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258 - "I, Millennial" Extract: Privatisation
Oh hello. I am back again. Look at us. This week I'm bringing you another taste of my debut book I, Millennial: One Snowflake's Screed Against Boomers, Billionaires & Everything Else, which is now out and about in the world. This is an extract from the chapter on privatisation - "From Our Warm,...
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257 - Craig Foster
Craig "Fozzy" Foster is a former Socceroo who has become not only one of Australia's most respected sports commentators and broadcasters, but also one of our most respected social justice advocates and human rights campaigners. This episode is Craig's keynote speech at the 2022 Refugee Legal…
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256 - Talking "I, Millennial" w/Osman Faruqi
My book I, Millennial: One Snowflake's Screed Against Boomers, Billionaires & Everything Else is out in the world! Gosh. We launched it in Melbourne with a lovely event at the Easey Street Concert Hall in Collingwood, featuring me in conversation with my mate Osman Faruqi. Oz and I discussed the...
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255 - "I, Millennial" Prologue
This week I'm bringing you a taste of my debut book I, Millennial: One Snowflake's Screed Against Boomers, Billionaires & Everything Else. You'll hear the full prologue from the audiobook that sets the whole thing up and talks about me doing drugs. The book comes out next week - you can pre-order...
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254 - Ben Schneiders
Ben Schneiders is an award-winning investigate journalist at The Age and author of the new book, Hard Labour: Wage Theft in the Age of Inequality. Over the past eight years, Ben's reporting has exposed the scourge of wage theft and worker exploitation in Australian hospitality, fast food, retail...
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253 - Leo Puglisi
I'm back! Again! Sorry about the big gap between episodes. I am bad. Leo Puglisi is a digital journalist who just so happens to be 14 years old. He founded what would eventually become the online news service 6 News Australia when he was just 11, and he's since grown it into a respectable...
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252 - Jim Casey
Jim Casey is a firefighting unionist, socialist and co-founder of the Australian Firefighters Climate Alliance. He is an anti-capitalist GREENS EXTREMIST who has twice run as a candidate against Anthony Albanese in the seat of Grayndler. As he gears up to run for Greens preselection to be an...
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251 - Georgia Steele
Georgia Steele is a former corporate litigator and now independent candidate running in the NSW seat of Hughes at the upcoming federal election. (The seat's currently held by former Liberal MP, now United Australia Party TRUTH-TELLER Craig Kelly.) In this conversation I discuss with Georgia…
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250 - David Shoebridge MLC
David Shoebridge MLC has served in the NSW upper house since 2010, and has been the Greens spokesperson for workers' rights, energy and Aboriginal justice. In 2022 he's running to pick up another NSW Senate seat for the Greens (and it's actually possible!). In this conversation I ask David about...
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249 - Palestine Justice Movement Sydney Forum: "Why We Are Boycotting The Sydney Festival"
This week I'm bringing you the audio of a panel I appeared on, discussing the reason behind and ideas around the recent boycott of the 2022 Sydney Festival. I joined dozens of other artists in withdrawing from the Festival to protest its acceptance of $20k in sponsorship money from the Israeli...
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248 - Johann Hari Returns (On "Stolen Focus")
Writer and journalist Johann Hari has returned to the show to discuss why our brains have melted. His new book is called Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention and it is a fascinating, depressing and insightful look at the "attention crisis" we're facing as a society. Johann tells me about…
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247 - Van Badham Returns (on #QAnon)
Van Badham is a playwright, author and activist, and she's returned to the show to discuss her latest book, QAnon: A Short and Shocking History of Internet Conspiracy Cults. Here Van lays out precisely what the QAnon conspiracy theory actually is, how it came into existence and how much it has...
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246 - James Button (on Cancel Culture)
James Button is a freelance journalist, ALP member and former speechwriter for the former prime minister Kevin Rudd. He recently wrote a three-part, in-depth series for Nine/Fairfax on "cancel culture": what it is, why it exists and what it means for the Australian Left. In this conversation…
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245 - Nyadol Nyuon (Refugee Legal Dinner 2021)
Nyadol Nyuon is a former refugee, lawyer and passionate advocate for human rights and anti-racism. This is her keynote address at the 2021 Refugee Legal "Not The Annual Dinner" (held via Zoom), which I MC'ed, followed by a Q&A session with Nyadol and Refugee Legal Executive Director David Manne....
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INTRODUCING: Serious Danger
NEWS: I have a brand new podcast to share with youse. It's called Serious Danger, it's about the Australian Greens and green politics in Australia generally and I'm doing it with my cool friend Emerald Moon. Also it's going to fix everything. Have a listen to hear the trailer and find out why I...
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244 - Luke Hilakari
Luke Hilakari has been the Secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council since 2014. He's been a Labor member since he turned 18 and has played a key role in electing (and re-electing) the Andrew Labor government and fighting for marriage equality and workers' rights. In light of all the BATSHIT...
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243 - Professor Megan Davis
Professor Megan Davis is a Cobble Cobble woman from Queensland and is the current pro Vice-Chancellor and Balnaves Chair in constitutional law at the University of New South Wales. She's worked for the United Nations and has been intimately involved in the campaign for meaningful constitutional...
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242 - Sean Kelly (Returns)
Sean Kelly is a writer and journalist, who's a former adviser to Prime Ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. His new book is The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison and it's great/scary/infuriating. With great insight and wit, Sean really tries to get at who our Prime Minister is, what drives,...
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241 - Sylvie Ellsmore
Sylvie Ellsmore is the Greens mayoral candidate for the City of Sydney in the upcoming NSW local elections. She's running a campaign to make Sydney a city for everyone, not just the rich, with a particular focus on housing and grassroots democracy. This was a fantastic conversation about the…
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240 - Christiaan Van Vuuren (Big Deal)
Christiaan Van Vuuren is a comedian and YouTube star who you know from Bondi Hipsters, Bloom and At Home Alone Together. He's the presenter of a great new documentary about money in Australian politics called Big Deal, which was directed by the Chaser's Craig Reucassel. This issue drives me (and...
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239 - Dr. Helen Haines
Dr. Helen Haines is a former nurse and midwife who now serves as the independent member for the Victorian seat of Indi. Since she entered the parliament Helen has been fighting for the establishment of a federal anti-corruption / pro-integrity body that will actually do what we want it to do:...
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238 - Felicity Ruby
Felicity Ruby is a former Greens staffer, current PhD candidate at the University of Sydney and longtime friend and supporter of Julian Assange. In the wake of revelations from Yahoo! News that Trump's CIA floated plans to kidnap and kill Assange after Wikileaks' "Vault 7" revelations in 2017, I...
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237 - Generations Apart (CIS event with Tom Switzer and Satya Jeetmarar)
This week's episode is from an event I took part in with the Centre for Independent Studies, hosted by Tom Switzer and featuring academic Satya Jeetmarar. Together we discussed/debated intergenerational inequality in the face of the COVID pandemic. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I think capitalism is…
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236 - Nick Boshier & Jazz Twemlow (The Moth Effect)
Nick Boshier (Trent from Punchy, Bondi Hipsters) and Jazz Twemlow (Tonightly with Tom Ballard lol) are two very nice men and good comedians who have created a new satirical sketch show for Amazon Prime, The Moth Effect. The dudes let me know the guiding philosophy behind the show's satire, their...
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235 - Senator Mehreen Faruqi
Mehreen Faruqi has been a Greens senator for NSW since 2017. Her memoir Too Migrant, Too Muslim, Too Loud was released in July, describing her life, politics and reflections on being a progressive and outspoken migrant in Australia. Here Mehreen and I discuss how her perceptions of what Australia...
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234 - Victor Kline (The New Liberals)
Victor Kline is a writer and barrister who is the leader of a new political party, The New Liberals. The party was born out of a frustration that Victor and some close friends felt by the current state of Australian politics and the lack of any party that truly represented them. Here we discuss...
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233 - Luke McGregor
Luke McGregor is a beloved Australian comedian who co-stars in the ABC series Rosehaven alongside Celia Pacquola and presents "Lukenomics" on The Weekly. He's also my very nice friend and one time we got KFC together. A month on from his appearance on Q&A alongside (now Nationals leader) Barnaby...
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232 - Josh Cullinan
Josh Callinan is the Secretary of the Retail And Fast Food Workers' Union (RAFFWU); a young fighting union which represents thousands of overwhelmingly younger Australian workers in highly casualised and insecure industries. RAFFWU was set up in opposition to the right-wing "yellow" union the…
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231 - Tim Hollo
Tim Hollo is a former staffer for the Australian Greens, is the Greens candidate for the federal seat of Canberra and works as the Executive Director of the official Greens think tank, The Greens Institute. He's currently working on a book laying out his theory of "ecological politics"; a a...
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230 - Emma Dawson
Emma Dawson is an ALP member and a former adviser to the Rudd and Gillard governments on public broadcasting policy. These days she's the Executive Director of the think tank Per Capita, "an independent, progressive think tank, dedicated to fighting inequality in Australia". After very kindly...
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229 - Jonathan Biggins
Jonathan Biggins is a legendary Australian satirist, actor and writer, who is currently performing his one-man show The Gospel According To Paul - a theatrical biography of the reforming Labor Treasurer and Prime Minister, Paul Keating. I asked Jonathan about his thoughts on Keating's complicated...
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228 - Richie Merzian
Richie Merzian is the Director of the Climate & Energy Program at The Australia Institute. With Australia embarrassing itself on the global stage when it comes to setting actual reduction targets that might actually do something, this was a great chance to check in with where the climate debate…
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227 - Melbourne Calling w/ Stephen Jolly, Alison Pennington, Guy Rundle & Jeff Sparrow
Hello! Sorry for the radio silence - I have been busy being too hot for TV and annoying Andrew Bolt. Apologies. This week's ep is a slice of a conversation I had with socialist councillor Stephen Jolly and Leftist intellectuals (and previous LIASYO guests) Alison Pennington, Jeff Sparrow and Guy...
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226 - Samantha Maiden
Samantha Maiden is an award-winning journalist who's currently the political editor at news.com.au. In February, she broke the story of Brittany Higgins' alleged rape in Parliament House in 2019, which has since sent shockwaves through Canberra and the Australian political class. I wanted to ask...
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225 - David Milner
David Milner is an award-winning journalist who now regularly writes for The Shot - a "profound and profane" news site from The Chaser that is consistently pumping out sharp, angry rants about the state of Australian politics and the sinister influence of the Murdoch media. This was a great...
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224 - Ricardo Menéndez March
Ricardo Menéndez March was elected to the Parliament of Aotearoa in 2020. He was born in Mexico, immigrated to New Zealand and eventually became a socialist, queer activist and anti-poverty campaigner. Ricardo tells me about the motto he lives by ("Be gay. Do crime"), the neoliberal legacy of the...
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223 - Senator Jordon Steele-John
Jordon Steele-John is a disability and youth activist and has been a Greens senator for Western Australia since 2017, when he replaced Scott Ludlam in the Senate at just 23 years old. Here I ask Jordon about how parliament actually works and how it feels to be inside it as a Millennial Green. He...
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222 - Amy Remeikis
Amy Remeikis is Guardian Australia's political reporter who writes the Australian politics live blog, covering the thrills and spills of Australian politics as they happen. Amy joined me after another crazy week in Canberra, to reflect on the "Remeikis experience", why the political class sucks…
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221 - Dr. Evan Smith
Dr. Evan Smith is a historian and academic who's extensively researched the history of the Far Left in Australia and the UK. Last year he released his book No Platforming: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech. I reached out to Evan last month after the whackiness…
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220 - Luke Savage
Luke Savage is a Canadian socialist and staff writer for Jacobin magazine whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic and The New Statesman. I've always really enjoyed Luke's writing about US politics and political economy and was stoked that he joined me from Toronto to chat about...
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219 - Doug Cameron
Doug Cameron is a former AMWU trade unionist who served as a Labor senator from 2008 to 2019. He's now retired to Hobart, but still regularly tweets out exactly what he thinks about Australian politics and the state of the ALP. After a week of leadership speculation, a shadow cabinet reshuffle…
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218 - Luke Pearson
Luke Pearson is a Gamilaroi man who in 2012 founded IndigenousX: a 100% Indigenous owned and operated, independent media, consultancy, and training organisation. As January 26th approaches, I wanted to ask Luke about what he makes of the Australia Day culture warring, his critique of the...
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217 - Amy MacMahon
Oh hello. Happy New Year. Amy MacMahon is the new Greens member for the Queensland state seat of South Brisbane after unseating Labor's Jackie Trad at the 2020 election. Amy tells me how her politics were informed by her experiences in Bangladesh and her mum's stroke of a few years ago. We…
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Like I'm A Six-Year-Old have?
Like I'm A Six-Year-Old currently has 264 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Like I'm A Six-Year-Old about?
Comedian Tom Ballard sits down with interesting and passionate people to find out what they do and what they believe in. It's kind of like Kitchen Cabinet except Tom can't cook.
How often does Like I'm A Six-Year-Old release new episodes?
Like I'm A Six-Year-Old publishes regularly with 264 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Like I'm A Six-Year-Old?
You can listen to Like I'm A Six-Year-Old on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Like I'm A Six-Year-Old?
Like I'm A Six-Year-Old is created and hosted by Tom Ballard.
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