All Episodes - Speaking with...
Ideas and analysis from the sharpest minds in the academic and research world.
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Speaking with: Chris Ho and Edgar Liu about diversity and high density in our cities
We can make conscious decisions about how we live together in closer proximity that allow for both cultural diversity and a shared sense of community. Ján Jakub Naništa/Unsplash This is a podcast discussing topics raised in our series, Australian Cities in the Asian Century. These articles draw on research, just published in a special issue of Geographical Research, into how Australian cities are being influenced by the rise of China and associated flows of people, ideas and capital between China and Australia. Migration and population growth are hot-button issues in Australian politics at the moment. State and federal election campaigns have and will focus on them for probably years to come, and it’s not just a local phenomenon: by 2030 it’s estimated 60% of the world’s population will live in cities. Most of the time discussions about the impacts are focused on external pressures – things like road congestion and infrastructure investment – but as more and more people are living in high-density housing, issues of cultural diversity and how we live together in such close proximity are just as important. How do we make sure we can live comfortably and respect each other? And how could policy change the sense of ownership we have over ever smaller personal spaces? Dallas Rogers speaks with Christina Ho and Edgar Liu about the changing ways we’re living in Australian cities, and how little attention has been given to what’s happening inside the apartment buildings of our cities. Music Free Music Archive: Ketsa - Catching Feathers Dallas Rogers recently received funding from The Henry Halloran Trust, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), Urban Growth NSW, Landcom, University of Sydney, Western Sydney University, and Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA).
Speaking with: ‘Everybody Lies’ author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz on why we tell the (sometimes disturbing) truth online
According to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, everybody lies to preserve social relations. www.shutterstock.com, CC BYHow much do you really know about your friends? Your co-workers? Your community and your country? The fact is that much of what we think we know about the people around us is likely to be skewed, because people tend to lie. We lie in conversation, on social media, and in surveys. But there exists an online trove of data that allows us to paint a much more accurate picture of who we really are. That’s the argument of US data scientist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, author of the book Everybody Lies and our guest on today’s episode of Speaking with. Stephens-Davidowitz says he uses data from the internet – what he calls “the traces of information that billions of people leave on Google, social media, dating, and even pornography sites” to tell us the surprising and sometimes disturbing truth about who we really are. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz spoke with David Tuffley, a senior lecturer in applied ethics and sociotechnical studies at Griffith University, to talk about what he learned. Edited by Dilpreet Kaur. Recorded by Michael Lund. Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is in Australia to speak at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney on this Sunday, November 4. He was also a speaker at Griffith University’s Integrity 20’18 event on October 24-26. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking with podcast on Apple Podcasts, or follow on Tunein Radio. You can find more podcast episodes from The Conversation here. Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria
Speaking with: Author Anita Heiss on Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia
Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia is a compilation of 52 essays from First Nations authors, some of whom have never been published before. Rounak Amini/AAPAnita Heiss is one of the most prolific writers documenting Aboriginal experiences in Australia today through non-fiction, historical fiction, poetry and children’s literature. Her memoir, Am I Black Enough for You?, was a finalist in the 2012 Human Rights Awards. Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia. Black Inc. Books For her latest book, Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, Heiss traded the role of writer for editor. The anthology includes 52 essays from First Nations writers spanning the breadth of society, from rural to urban, young to old, coastal regions to the country’s interior, well known authors to emerging writers. There’s even an essay by an opera singer, Don Bemrose, about his experience as what she calls a “double minority” – he’s both Aboriginal and gay. The result is a collection of stories that speaks to the strength of Aboriginal identity in Australia today, as well as the diversity of voices in the long marginalised Aboriginal literary community. For this episode of Speaking With, Professor Jacinta Elston, pro vice-chancellor (Indigenous) at Monash University, spoke with Heiss about the process of making the selections for the anthology, the main themes explored in the essays and how she envisions the book being used as a reference tool in classrooms across the country. Edited by Maggy Liu. Anita Heiss is speaking at the Brisbane Writers Festival on Sunday, 9 September. Read more: Love in the time of racism: ‘Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms’ explores the politics of romance Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on Apple Podcasts, or follow on Tunein Radio. You can find more podcast episodes from The Conversation here. Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria Jacinta Elston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: law professor Cass Sunstein, on why behavioural science is always nudging us
Governments can use nudges to influence our choices ShutterstockWhat can governments do to stop increasing obesity rates, help people save or get them to file their tax returns on time? The default answer used to be some kind of tax or penalty. Just make people pay more and they’ll do the right thing, right? But what if you could encourage certain behaviour without forcing the issue? That’s where nudges come in. These are small changes in design or presentation, like putting healthy food near the cash register, or sending reminders out around tax time. For this episode of Speaking with, The Conversation’s Josh Nicholas chats with Cass Sunstein, a Harvard professor who worked as a “regulatory czar” for years in the Obama administration. Sunstein literally wrote the book on nudges along with Richard Thaler, who won the 2017 economics Nobel Prize. The book is called Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness. Read more: The promise and perils of giving the public a policy 'nudge' As the controversial My Health Record has shown, behavioural science is now considered a standard part of the public policy toolkit. My Health Record was created to be “opt out”, in order to “nudge” people into remaining in the system. This takes advantage of a bias we have towards the default setting: many of us won’t expend the effort to opt out. Many governments – including Australia’s – now have professional “nudge units” stocked with behavioural scientists, working on problems such as tax avoidance and organ donation. Today on Speaking with, Professor Sunstein talks about nudges and public policy, when and where they work and how policymakers should use them. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on Apple Podcasts, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria
Speaking with: journalist David Neiwert on the rise of the alt-right in Trump’s America
A white supremacist holding a US flag over his face during a Unite the Right rally in Washington in August. Michael Reynolds/EPAThe rise of the radical right-wing movement in the US has become closely linked to Donald Trump’s presidency and the mainstreaming of ideas about race that were not so long ago found only on the furthest fringes of society. David Neiwert’s new book, Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, charts the key political and social moments that have shaped these movements. He has spent more than two decades immersing himself in the strange, disturbing world of radical right-wing groups in the US, which are characterised by conspiracy theories unhinged from reality and a growing tendency to espouse violence against liberals as a solution to the world’s problems. Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump. Verso Books While many of the ideas championed by these groups are similar those propagated by the Ku Klux Klan of the past, the new radical right-wing groups have benefited from the internet and social media. This allows them to easily communicate their perceived grievances to a new generation of followers, predominantly young men. In some ways, this provides for a degree of anonymity, as well. Some of the more violent, racist and often misogynist views are promulgated by these groups online with little personal social cost. What is most concerning, and what Neiwert demonstrates in detail throughout the book, is the way in which the mainstream news media, in particular Fox News, has become a forum for mainstreaming some of these ideas about racial superiority, fuelling political division and partisanship. With the election of Trump, these once marginalised groups now have a clear figurehead – one who promotes their wild, and sometimes dangerous, conspiracy theories to the world. Neiwert’s book delves deep into the anxieties these people feel about their status in a changing and complex world. Issues like immigration, changing race relations, women’s rights and economic stagnation have all fuelled a desire to find someone to blame. When this is mixed with a pervasive gun culture, the result is a highly volatile mix of anger, paranoia and violence. Investigative journalist David Neiwert. Author provided The consequences have been deeply disturbing. Political rallies that end in frenzied screams of “lock her up”, alt-right rallies that result in death, and the growing toll of mass shootings that are disproportionately carried out by offenders influenced by the alt-right are a sign that something fundamentally twisted and nasty is colonising mainstream American politics. Edited by Maggy Liu. David Neiwert is appearing at the Word Christchurch Festival on Thursday, 30 August; the Antitode Festival in Sydney on Sunday, 2 September; and the Brisbane Writers Festival on Saturday, 8 September. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. See also: Trump’s First Year in Office: Bizarre and Sometimes Alarming Booksellers, the alt-right and Milos Yiannopolous The seeds of the alt-right, America’s emergent, right-wing populist movement Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria Kumuda Simpson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Cameron McAuliffe on NIMBYs, urban planning and making community consultation work
We're used to hearing cries of "NIMBYism" and "money-hungry developers" on both sides of planning debates, but there's actually more subtlety to interactions around urban planning that are worth exploring and understanding. Joel Carrett/AAPOne of the most common complaints about community involvement in the urban planning process is “NIMBYism” – the “not in my backyard” cry from local residents, which developers and potential residents of medium-to-high-density apartments see as an impediment to healthy urban development and affordable housing. At the same time, local residents often see the planning process as freezing them out of having any real say in development that can affect local amenities, transport and neighbourhood character. Recent changes to planning legislation in New South Wales make community participation plans a mandatory part of the process, in an effort to put consultation at the centre of urban planning. But how do you balance these two competing, seemingly antagonistic groups? Dallas Rogers speaks with Cameron McAuliffe, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography and Urban Studies at Western Sydney University, about how urban planning can leverage the natural conflict between groups with very different demands to reach better solutions, why the NIMBY slur is often misplaced and how local resident action groups are working beyond the current urban planning system to achieve their goals. This podcast reports on data in the research paper “Tracing resident antagonisms in urban development: agonistic pluralism and participatory planning”, to be published in Geographical Research. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on Apple Podcasts, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music Free Music Archive: Ketsa - Catching feathers Dallas Rogers recently received funding from Western Sydney University, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), Urban Growth NSW, University of Sydney, and Community Broadcasting Association of Australia. The Henry Halloran Trust funded the research reported on in this podcast.
Speaking with: satirist Armando Iannucci on The Death of Stalin
The Death of Stalin is about the chaotic political drama that followed the Russian leader's demise in 1953. Madman FilmsWe’re living in something of a golden age for political satire. Politics and satire can even feel, at times, almost indistinguishable. But politics and comedy have never been that far apart. Charlie Chaplin’s 1941 film The Great Dictator ridiculed Adolf Hitler. More recently The Thick of It mocked the UK political class and Veep satirised US politics with very funny and scarily prescient results. Those latter two were written by Armando Iannucci, a Scottish writer and director who has been described as the hardman of political satire. His new film, The Death of Stalin, stars the likes of Steve Buscemi and Jason Isaacs and is about the chaotic political drama that followed the Russian leader’s demise in 1953. A scene from The Death of Stalin. Madman films For this episode of Speaking With, I spoke to Armando Iannucci, who warns that we should beware any politician who can’t take a joke. And, by the way, there’s a bit of swearing in this interview, so consider this a language warning. The Death of Stalin will be in cinemas March 29 across Australia. Read more: No laughing matter: Armando Iannucci's The Death of Stalin reveals the anxieties of team Putin Stephen Harrington does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Andrew Leigh on why we need more randomised trials in policy and law
AndrewLeigh.com, Author providedRandomised controlled trials are the gold standard in medical research. Researchers divide participants into two groups using the equivalent of flipping a coin, with one group getting a new treatment and a control group getting either the standard treatment or a placebo. It’s the best way to prove that a new treatment works. But the benefits of randomised trials aren’t limited to medical applications. Big businesses – like Amazon, Google, Facebook and even media organisations – are increasingly using randomised trials to test designs and processes that increase their engagement with users and customers. Every time you Google something you’re probably participating in a randomised trial. And that world of randomisation is the subject of Andrew Leigh’s new book, Randomistas: How radical researchers changed our world. Leigh is the current federal member for Fenner, and Labor’s shadow assistant treasurer. But prior to his political life he was a professor of economics at Australian National University. He spoke with the University of Melbourne’s Fiona Fidler about how we should be using randomised trials more to drive decisions and policy in public life and why we might be missing out on better results in social policy because we’re afraid to test our assertions. Andrew Leigh’s Randomistas: How radical researchers changed our world is out now from Black Inc books. His podcast on living a health, happy and ethical life, The Good Life, is available on Apple Podcasts or wherever you stream your podcasts. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on Apple Podcasts, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria Fiona Fidler receives funding from the Australian Research Council and IARPA.
Speaking with: David Field about unusual crimes that have changed the law
Is sleepwalking a legitimate defence for murder? Are victims of family violence protected against the premeditated killing of their abuser? Professor David Field has worked as a public prosecutor, a criminal defence lawyer and as the solicitor for prosecutions in Queensland, a post he occupied for nine years. He spoke to William Isdale about some extraordinary crimes that have resulted in changes to the criminal law, and the precedents these cases have then established. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio CBC Digital Archive: 1990: Supreme Court accepts battered wife syndrome defence The New York Times:‘Dingo’s Got My Baby’ Trial by Media Retro Report ABC: Stafford lawyer calls for Holland murder inquiry ABC: Azaria case closes after 32yrs ABC Radio National: Battered woman defence SBS: Is the provocation defence allowing killers to get off lightly? Global Newspaper: Ivan Milat Inside the mind of a serial killer Channel TEN: Sydney’s 5:00PM newscast PBS: The Brain with David Eagleman Music Law and Order theme by Mike Post Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria Murder Mystery Royalty Free Swing & Mystery Music David Field’s book Crimes That Shaped The Law contains true stories of crimes that have resulted in changes to the criminal law. In many of these cases, a miscarriage of justice precipitated reform. William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: social researcher and author Hugh Mackay on 2017, ‘a really disturbing year’
Social researcher Hugh Mackay and The Conversation's FactCheck Editor Lucinda Beaman. “I’ve found 2017 a really disturbing year.” That’s the summary from writer, thinker and social researcher Hugh Mackay. Mackay spoke in December with The Conversation’s FactCheck Editor Lucinda Beaman at the Sydney launch of The Conversation 2017 Year Book: 50 standout articles from Australia’s top thinkers. Among the essays featured in the book is Mackay’s enormously popular and thought-provoking article titled The state of the nation starts in your street. The discussion, which you can hear in full on The Conversation’s Speaking With podcast above, touched on issues ranging from the rise of Donald Trump and what it means for Australian politics, to social dislocation and distrust in our institutions – and in each other. Mackay said: “We’re now seeing many long term trends coming to fruition”. “What is happening to Australian society is that we are edging in that same direction [as America]: more inequality, a growing number of people who feel as though the political narrative – such as it is – has got nothing to do with them,” he said. “Fragmentation is the theme of 2017,” he said, citing concerns about loneliness and disconnected communities. As for what we can do differently in 2018? Part of the solution, Mackay said, is getting off the screens and connecting with people in our local neighbourhoods. “We don’t have to be prime minister, we don’t have to be in government, we don’t have to be the lord mayor of Sydney to produce changes that could transform our way of life and mental health,” he said. “We’re like most species on the planet in our deep need of each other, our deep need to feel connected, to feel as though we belong to herds and tribes, neighbourhoods groups and communities.” “So the first thing I would say is let’s recognise that this strange collection of people that I live with in my apartment block or in my street are my neighbours and the neighbourhood.” “We’re all friendly with our friends and we all know how to be nice to people we like. The great thing about neighbourhoods is they’re full of people we may like or dislike, very different from us,” he said. “It’s very good for our moral development to have to learn how to rub along with people you didn’t choose.” When you move into a neighbourhood, he said, “you have imposed upon yourself a moral obligation to engage with whatever that community turns out to be. Because in a crisis, you’re going to need each other.” “If you know that someone in your street or in your apartment block is living alone and you don’t see much of them, make sure you’ve made contact. Just knock on the door and say ‘G'day, I’m Hugh, I’m not going to bother you but I’m here’,” he said. “It’s a good time of year to be saying ‘what can we do?’. Because it’s the season when it doesn’t seem deeply weird to organise a street party, or to invite the neighbours in.” Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on Apple Podcasts, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria
Speaking with: Emrys Westacott on the virtue of frugal living
Simple living in a complex time – is a return to frugality the key to happiness? Xurxo Martínez/flickr, CC BY-NC-SAThey say the best things in life are free – or at least, Emrys Westacott seems to think so. For those who have the choice, the rejection of extravagance is deemed highly virtuous. Many of the great thinkers of history have advocated the moral value of frugal living, but in our culture of excess the temptation to indulge can be difficult to overcome. William Isdale spoke with Emrys Westacott, a Professor of Philosophy at Alfred University, New York, about how a return to simple living could bring greater happiness in our increasingly complex world – though there’s a case to be made for the cultural value of extravagance, too. Emrys Westacott is the author of The Wisdom of Frugality: Why Less Is More - More or Less, a philosophically informed reflection on the benefits of frugal living. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on Apple Podcasts, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio William Hemblton: Hotel Carpe Diem Advertisement Telstra: The Magic of Technology Freesound: dobroide - 20060824.forest03.wav Freesound: InspectorJ - Stream, Water, C.wav Freesound: eastierp - frogs in a pond Freesound: Arctura - AMBIENT LOOP - Perfectly Clear - Wilderness Hillside - FILTERED.mp3 Freesound: pcaeldries - FireBurning_v2.wav Lr33s_ag: All of Donald Trump’s Billions Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria Free Music Archive: U.S. Army Blues - Main Stem Free Music Archive: U.S. Army Blues - Not On The Bus Free Music Archive: Jason Shaw - Running Waters Free Music Archive: Gillicuddy - Adventure, Darling Free Music Archive: Gardner Chamber Orchestra - Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, K. 364 Emrys Westacott received a summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2010 to support the writing of his last book, 'The Wisdom of Frugality.'William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Bates Gill on Australia’s changing relationship with China
Flickr: Pedro Szekely, CC BY-SADuring Xi Jinping’s opening address at the Communist Party’s 19th National Party Congress last week, the Chinese president outlined his vision of a “new era” for China – one that will see “China moving closer to centre stage”. China’s economic and foreign policies have significant implications for Australia. More than 30% of our exports go to China, more than 1 million Chinese tourists visit Australia every year, and about 30% of international students in Australia are Chinese, contributing billions to the economy. It is obvious that Australia needs to maintain a strong relationship with China as it transitions to a “new era”. But the relationship is often complicated by the perception that Australia needs to choose between our military ally, the US, and our biggest trading partner, China. William Isdale spoke with Bates Gill, professor of Asia-Pacific strategic studies at Macquarie University, about Australia’s complex relationship with China and how we must adapt to meet China’s evolving needs. Gill recently co-authored a book, China Matters: Getting it Right for Australia, which explores the importance of the relationship between the two countries. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcast on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio The New York Times - Environmental Cost of China’s Growth Senator Marco Rubio speaking on the U.S. Senate floor ABC - Australia’s relationship with China explained CGTN - Australia welcomes wave of Chinese travelers seeking new experiences CNN - Anti-Japanese protests rage in China Al Jazeera/Counting The Cost - Australia and China: Turning the page PBS Newshour - Sudden Chinese currency devaluation ABC News - Bloody Riots in China Leave 156 Dead Al Jazeera - Chinese troops out in force in Xinjiang ABC - Australia in firing line if US and China go to war Music Harvest of Tea Music by: 我是愛音樂的徐夢圓 Performed by: 辰小弦 Wysteria by: Blue Dot Sessions Loco Lobo - Rice Fields Crop Loco Lobo - Little Robots Army William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Emma Power and Jennifer Kent about why Australian cities and homes aren’t built for pets
A canine commuter catches up on some sleep on the Paris Metro. Kevin O'Mara/Flickr, CC BY-NC-NDWe’re a nation of pet lovers: 60% of Australian households have some kind of pet. And with dogs in 39% of those homes, it’s only natural that we’re starting to see dogs sitting happily alongside human diners at places like cafes and pubs. But while we have one of the highest levels of pet ownership in the world, our rights and infrastructure planning don’t seem to be built around this reality. No Australian cities allow dogs on public transport – something that’s commonplace in many cities in Europe – and many tenants find that looking for a rental property with a pet is virtually impossible. Dallas Rogers speaks with Emma Power, urban cultural geography senior research fellow at Western Sydney University, and Jennifer Kent, urban planning research fellow at the University of Sydney, about why a nation of pet lovers doesn’t seem very interested in planning for pets. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional audio: Domain.com.au: Jimmy Thomson – No barbecue ban but pets on notice as strata regulators lay down the law Music: Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions – Outside the Terminal Dallas Rogers has received funding from The Henry Halloran Trust, AHURI, Urban Growth, the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, the University of Sydney and Western Sydney University.
Speaking with: John Gerrard on preventing infectious diseases
John Gerrard says a developed city like Sydney could not cope with an epidemic of the scale of the recent Ebola outbreak. UNMEER/Martine Perret/Flickr, CC BY-NDThe Spanish Flu of 1918 is estimated to have infected around 500 million, and killed between 20 and 40 million, people around the world - all within the space of a year. It is perhaps the deadliest pandemic in human history. We have seen nothing as devastating since, but outbreaks such as influenza, HIV/AIDS, Zika and Ebola highlight that infectious diseases are a constant threat. William Isdale spoke with Dr. John Gerrard about predicting the next major infectious disease threat, and how we can prevent a pandemic from establishing itself in Australia. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on Apple Podcasts, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio Next News - Return of Ebola 9 News: A Perth mother of three dying after being struck down by a tick CNN News: There will be a pandemic BBC News: Ebola Virus: Film reveals scenes of horror in Liberia The Daily Conversation: Ebola explained CNN News: The Situation Room - MRSA BBC News: Antibiotic resistance Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Union Hall Melody Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Janitor William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Nicole Gurran on Airbnb and its impact on cities
New York residents protest against AirBnB at a City Hall hearing into the impact of short-term rentals in 2015. Shannon Stapleton/ReutersAirbnb has turned sharing our homes and living spaces with strangers from a fringe idea into a multi-million dollar business. It’s changed the way many of us travel. But its growth has turned many suburbs and apartment buildings that are zoned for residential use into hotels, with temporary residents who have no long-term investment in the neighbourhoods they inhabit. In cities like Sydney, Barcelona and Lisbon, where housing costs and vacancy are increasingly outpacing the wealth of citizens, Airbnb puts more power in the hands of landlords and threatens to push up prices for everyday tenants. The University of Sydney’s Dallas Rogers speaks with Nicole Gurran, professor in urban and regional planning at the University of Sydney, about what different cities around the world are doing to regulate Airbnb, what the benefits and costs are of the “sharing economy” model in accommodation, and what data actually exists for researchers and policymakers in this growing industry. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional audio TED: Joe Gebbia - How Airbnb designs for trust Domain.com.au: How Airbnb is leaving property owners exposed Music Free Music Archive: Ketsa – Catching Feathers Dallas Rogers has received funding from The Henry Halloran Trust, AHURI, Urban Growth, the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, the University of Sydney and Western Sydney University.
Speaking with: Nancy Pachana on planning for an active and engaged ageing population
The Danish Choir “Gangstativerne”, singing at a conference launching the European Year for Active Ageing and Solidarity Between Generations in 2012. DG EMPL/ flickr, CC BY-NCDue to advances in medicine, hygiene and nutrition we are now living longer than ever before. In our region, the percentage of people over the age of 60 doubled in just 20 years - something that took 120 years in Europe and the United States. And while there are definitely losses as we age – fine motor skills and a higher probability of conditions like dementia – there’s evidence that for many people brain development continues healthily into their eighties. So how do we leverage the knowledge and social capital that older people accrue over their lives and help them to feel engaged, supported and energised during what has traditionally been characterised as a time of decline? The University of Melbourne’s Will Isdale spoke with Nancy Pachana, Professor of Clinical Geropsychology at the University of Queensland and author of the book Ageing: A Very Short Introduction, about what we can do to plan for a healthy, engaged senior population. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Cameron Murray on grey corruption and the ‘Game of Mates’
Land rezoning, sales, and planning approvals are just a few of the ways 'grey gifts' can decide who benefits from government decisions. Dean Lewins/AAPThe role of declared gifts and donations has driven a lot of discussion around government corruption in recent years. But what about the clique of developers, banks and superannuation companies who reap the benefits of policies and approvals that preserve monopolies? How do we decide who the winners and losers are in society, without even going into the more obvious acts of money changing hands for sweetheart deals between friends? Cameron Murray is a lecturer in economics at the University of Queensland and the co-author (with Paul Frijters) of the Game of Mates. The book explores the murky world of “grey gifts”: favours and promises given to bureaucrats and politicians in order to secure favourable decisions and judgements. The University of Melbourne’s William Isdale spoke with Murray on how these arrangements occur, who benefits, and who ultimately foots the bill. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Dr Mark Blaskovich on antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the threat of superbugs
Antibiotics Staphylex, used to treat the infection Golden Staph. TONY PHILLIPS/ AAPSince the discovery of antibiotics in the mid-20th century, millions of lives have been saved from bacterial infections. But the over-prescription of these drugs has led to some types of bacteria becoming resistant to treatment. It’s estimated at least two million people are infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the United States each year. These “superbugs” can spread rapidly and stopping them is increasingly challenging as new antibiotics need to be developed to treat them. William Isdale spoke to Dr Mark Blaskovich about the the overuse of antibiotics and the risks superbugs pose to communities. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio New study raising alarms about ‘superbugs’, CNN ‘Nightmare’ drug-resistant bacteria found in U.S., CNN Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria Free Music Archive: Johnny_Ripper - Gaël William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Julian Savulescu on the ethics of genetic modification in humans
Could genetic engineering one day allow parents to have designer babies? Tatiana Vdb/flickr, CC BYWhat if humans are genetically unfit to overcome challenges like climate change and the growing inequality that looks set to define our future? Julian Savulescu, visiting professor at Monash University and Uehiro professor of Practical Ethics at Oxford University, argues that modifying the biological traits of humans should be part of the solution to secure a safe and desirable future. The University of Melbourne’s William Isdale spoke to Julian Savulescu about what aspects of humanity could be altered by genetic modifications and why it might one day actually be considered unethical to withhold genetic enhancements that could have an overwhelmingly positive effect on a child’s life. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on Apple Podcasts, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio VPro Extra - The Perfect Human Being: Julian Savulescu on human enhancement Channel Four Television Corporation - Science and the Swastika VPro Extra - The Perfect Human Being: Michael Sandel on the values of being a human being Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria Free Music Archive: Kai Engel - Pacific Garbage Patch Free Music Archive: Circus Marcus - La tapa del domingo William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Professor Peter Koopman on CRISPR and the power of genome editing
Editing DNA has the potential to treat disease by repairing or removing defective genes. Kyle Lawson/flickr, CC BY-NC-NDCRISPR, or clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, is a technology that is able to alter DNA. While this sounds like the realms of science fiction, right now scientists are investigating its potential to eliminate genetic diseases in humans by repairing or replacing defective genes. The University of Melbourne’s William Isdale spoke with Professor Peter Koopman from the University of Queensland about his research into CRISPR and the possibilities it could offer to future generations, as well as those suffering from genetic conditions right now. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio CBS - CRISPR How CRISPR lets us edit our DNA | Jennifer Doudna Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria Free Music Archive: Johnny_Ripper - Gaël William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Peter Doherty about infectious disease pandemics
Medical workers move a woman, who is suspected of having Ebola, upon her arrival at Meioxeiro Hospital, in Vigo, northwestern Spain, 28 October 2015. SALVADOR SAS (EPA)/ AAPHumans have had to deal with infectious diseases for centuries. Ancient Greeks and Egyptians suffered from smallpox, leprosy and tuberculosis. And when an outbreak occurs, it can be devastating. Pandemics like the Black Plague, Spanish Flu and HIV have killed millions of people around the world. While improved sanitation and a better understanding of how infections spread has helped halt some pandemics, we are never truly safe. Recent outbreaks of Ebola in Western Africa and the Zika virus in the Americas show how vulnerable we are. William Isdale speaks with Melbourne University Professor and Nobel prize winner Peter Doherty about how infectious diseases start and spread, and what can be done by governments, health organisations and individuals to minimise the threat of a pandemic. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio Ebola outbreak: Deadliest on record - BBC News Bird flu returns to Europe On this day 8th April 2003 SARS deadly virus Hong Kong H7N9 Outbreak Thousands of Birds Culled Over H7N9 Discovery Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria Free Music Archive: Johnny_Ripper - Gaël William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Tony Kevin on his return to Moscow and the new Cold War with Russia
Russian line guard march prior to a military parade in Moscow. Yuri Kochetkov/EPATony Kevin first went to the Soviet Union in 1969. He was 25 years old and working in the Australian Embassy in Moscow at the peak of the Cold War. Embassy staff were told to be aware that every discussion was probably being recorded, and that they should avoid any interactions with locals. Forty-eight years later he returned to Russia and found a very different country from the one he left. In his new book, Return to Moscow, Kevin describes the changes in Russian society since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Vladimir Putin. The political and societal differences are stark. William Isdale spoke to Kevin about his new book, his memories of living in Russia and why he thinks so much distrust and fear of the nation still exists in the West. Tony Kevin’s Return to Moscow is out now from UWA Publishing. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional music Tchaikovsky - Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
No problem too big #1: Artificial intelligence and killer robots
Imagine a world where artificial intelligence is in control and humans are brink of extinction. What went wrong? What could we have done? ShutterstockThis is the first episode of a special Speaking With podcast series titled No Problem Too Big, where a panel of artists and researchers speculate on the end of the world as though it has already happened. It’s not the world we grew up in. Not since artificial intelligence. The machines have taken control. Three fearless researchers gather in the post-apocalyptic twilight: a computer scientist, a mechanical engineer and a sci-fi author. Together, they consider the implications of military robots and autonomous everything, and discover that the most horrifying post-apocalyptic scenario might look something like unrequited robot love. Joanne Anderton is an award-winning author of speculative fiction stories for anyone who likes their worlds a little different. More information about Joanne and her novels can be found here. No Problem Too Big is created and hosted by Adam Hulbert, who lectures in media and sonic arts at the University of New South Wales. It is produced with the support of The Conversation and University of New South Wales. Sound design by Adam Hulbert. Theme music by Phonkubot. Additional music: Beast/Decay/Mist by Haunted Me (via Free Music Archive) Humming Ghost by Haunted Me (via Free Music Archive) Additional audio: Stephen Hawking interview, BBC News Adam Hulbert is affiliated with The University of New South Wales
Speaking with: Mia Woodruff about using 3D printing to replace body parts
Mia Woodruff at the November 2016 launch of the Herston Biofabrication Institute, a collaboration between QUT and the Metro North Hospital and Health Service. AAP3D printing is fundamentally changing the way we make many objects – from construction materials to toys and even food. And being able to 3D-scan the environment, even our own bodies, means that tools and prosthetics that were once mass-produced can now be custom-made for the people they’re designed to help, at a low cost. What if one of the most essential items in the hospital of the future is a 3D printer? William Isdale speaks with Queensland University of Technology’s Mia Woodruff about the work she and her team are doing to explore the use of 3D-printed bio-gels and scaffolds in healing cartilage and bone injuries, and looking to a future where biological functions for those currently on organ donor lists might be fulfilled by bio-compatible machines created in a lab. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio Fox News, Scientists trying to create human heart with 3D printer Associated Press, Obama announces new manufacturing hubs New China TV, Man recovers after 3D-printed prosthetic skull replacement My Angel Foundation, The Power of Yes - organ donation myths vs facts 730, ABC News – Why are Australia’s organ donation rates so low? Music Free Music Archive: Scott Holmes - Fall and Rise Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - When The Guests Have Left Free Music Archive: Psychadelik Pedestrian - Pacific Free Music Archive: Kai Engel - February Free Music Archive: Johnny_Ripper - Gaël William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: The Daily Beast’s Christopher Dickey on reporting on and living through terrorism in Paris
Parisians gather at the Bataclan nightclub on November 13, 2016, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of terror attacks that took 130 lives across Paris. Philippe Wojazer/ReutersSince the start of 2015, more than 230 people have died in France as the result of terror attacks. Christopher Dickey in a cafe in Paris’ Latin Quarter with Colleen Murrell. Colleen Murrell, Author provided The three major attacks – the shootings at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the co-ordinated assaults on the night of November 13, 2015, (including the storming of the Bataclan Theatre), and the piloting of a truck down the Promenade des Anglais in Nice on Bastille Day 2016 – have left the French rattled and led to an increase in security across the country. Colleen Murrell, senior journalism lecturer and researcher at Monash University, speaks with The Daily Beast’s Paris-based world news editor, Christopher Dickey, about what it’s like to live in and report on Paris in the wake of these attacks. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio BBC News coverage, November 13th 2015 Music Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria Free Music Archive: Johnny_Ripper - Gaël Colleen Murrell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Peter Green on saving the Christmas Island red crab
Peter Green joins the millions of Christmas Island red crabs in their migration. Greg Miles, Author providedEvery year tens of millions of Christmas Island red crabs migrate from the island’s dense forest to the cliffs to spawn. It’s a phenomenon that literally stops traffic and draws tourists from around the world to the tiny Australian territory. But while there are still tens of millions of red crabs on the island, in recent years their numbers have dipped by around a third as they compete for space with (and struggle to fend off) a recently introduced pest: the yellow crazy ant. The ants are having a significant impact on the island’s biodiversity, which relies on the red crab to maintain the forest understorey and keep the forest floor clean. So what can be done to save Christmas Island’s biodiversity from yellow crazy ant supercolonies? For the past few years a team of scientists have been hatching a plan to introduce a parasitical wasp to the island to cut the ant’s food supply. And in December they got the ball rolling on the delicate process of tipping the scales back in the crabs’ favour. La Trobe University’s Matt Smith speaks with Peter Green, Head of the Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution at La Trobe, about the impact of the yellow crazy ant and how his team’s plan to save the Christmas Island red crab is working in the first few months of its implementation. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music Free Music Archive: Ars Sonor - The Spring Drone Free Music Archive: Blue Dot Sessions - Wisteria Free Music Archive: Dave Depper - Coming Into Focus Free Music Archive: Dave Depper - Wholesome 7 Peter Green receives funding from the Department of Environment and Energy.
Speaking with: Nicole Cook on union ‘green bans’, housing affordability and the Sirius building
The former state secretary of the Builders Labourers Federation, Jack Mundey, in front of the Sirius building. Dean Lewins/AAPSydney’s iconic Sirius building was scheduled for demolition by the New South Wales government in 2015. The building – a prominent Australian example of brutalist architecture – contains 79 apartments for public housing tenants, and residents are furious that they are being moved on to make way for 250 luxury apartments at the gateway of the city. But this isn’t the first time a NSW government has targeted the Millers Point and Rocks areas for redevelopment. When the Askin government proposed development of the area in the late 1960s, residents’ groups formed an alliance with the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF). Through a series of co-ordinated strikes (or “green bans”), they worked to guarantee affordable housing and community spaces for generations of working-class and union families. Following in the BLF’s footsteps, the CFMEU and Unions NSW put a green ban on the Sirius site from September 2016. Dallas Rogers speaks with Nicole Cook, lecturer at the University of Wollongong, about what we can learn from the alliance between residents and unions in the 1970s and the lasting impact the green bans had on planning policy. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music Free Music Archive – Blue Dot Sessions, Outside the Terminal Free Music Archive – The Kyoto Connection, Close to the Abyss Additional Audio William Woods (YouTube) – Lifetime resident Barney Gardner addresses crowd outside NSW Parliament House Tanya Plibersek – Millers Point Public Housing ABC Radio National – Blue Print for Living, Iconic Buildings: Sirius Building Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority – The Rocks: Jack Mundey and the Victory Forced Out – The Documentary (Preview): Pru Goward interview Pat Fiske – Rocking the Foundations (interviews with Nita McCrae and Owen Magee) Dallas Rogers receives funding from the Community Broadcasting Foundation to produce short academic interviews for SoundMinds Radio (http://www.soundminds.com.au/author/dallas/). Segments of this interview were played on community radio in January 2017.
Speaking with: Serial’s Julie Snyder about making groundbreaking podcasts
SerialBy now almost everyone has heard – or heard of – This American Life’s blockbuster podcast series Serial. The first series, originally published in 2014, covered the incarceration and possible wrongful conviction of Adnan Syed for the murder of schoolgirl Hae Min Lee in Baltimore. In June this year Syed was granted a new trial for the murder, based at least partially on the renewed scrutiny of the case by the Serial team. So what does it take to make a podcast that has had over 243 million downloads over two series? What decisions have to be made about pacing, music, how to represent the real-life characters involved and the impact it will have on its subjects’ lives? And in a Trump-led post-truth world, what role can podcasting play to inform public conversations? The University of Wollongong’s Dr Siobhan McHugh (who was recently a consulting producer on Fairfax’s successful Phoebe’s Fall podcast) talks to Julie Snyder, Serial’s Executive Producer and co-creator, about the process of making a serialised audio documentary and its impact on its listeners, creators and subjects. Siobhan McHugh was consulting producer for the podcast Phoebe's Fall, from The Age newsroom, Melbourne, mentioned in the interview. She is the recipient of an Australian Research Council grant to make a radio documentary series about the relationships behind the production of Aboriginal art. She is the founding editor of RadioDoc Review, an online journal that critiques audio documentaries and podcasts (http://ro.uow.edu.au/rdr).
Speaking with: Alanna Kamp about the erasure of Chinese-Australian women from our history books
Chinese Australians have been in Australia for more than a century, but they are invisible in our records. Shutterstock/The ConversationWe tend to think of Australia as having a largely European population in the years dominated by the White Australia policy. But the truth is Chinese-Australians have been contributing to our national character since the 1850s. Women – and women from non-European backgrounds in particular – have often been excluded from both research and our historical records thanks to patriarchal attitudes to women’s work. And the hidden histories of Chinese-Australian women during the era of the White Australia policy – many of whom are still alive today – have a lot to tell us about the realities of migration and Australian culture. Dallas Rogers speaks with the University of Western Sydney’s Alanna Kamp about her research on the forgotten lives of Chinese-Australian women in the 20th century, the silence in our census records about their experiences, and why it matters for our understanding of Australia’s national identity. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music Audioblocks - Che Thang Theme Audioblocks - China Town Audioblocks - Spooky Tension Gong Free Music Archive - “When the Guests Have Left” by Blue Dot Sessions Dallas Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Ilan Wiesel and Ray Forrest about the impact of the super rich on our cities
The super rich are a symbol of growing wealth inequality. ShutterstockThe “1%” – the super elite who hold a disproportionate amount of global wealth – have been the subject of reality TV, protests, media speculation and best-selling books in recent years. Private jets, multi-million-dollar apartments and cars worth the value of most people’s homes: these are the symbols we associate with them, but is there really a defining culture of the super rich? And are the extremely wealthy to blame for growing inequality? Or do our own aspirations make us complicit in their dominance of politics and commerce? Dallas Rogers speaks with Ilan Wiesel from the University of Melbourne and the City University of Hong Kong’s Ray Forrest about the impact the super rich have on our cities and culture. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional audio CNBC: “Secret Lives of the Super Rich - Gil Dezer” Music Audioblocks - “New Frontiers” Audioblocks - “eCommerce (remix)” Free Music Archive - Ars Sonor, “The Spring Drone” Free Music Archive - Ars Sonor, “Runsten” Audioblocks – “Technology Circuits” Dallas Rogers receives funding from the Community Broadcasting Foundation to produce short academic interviews for SoundMinds Radio (http://www.soundminds.com.au/author/dallas/). Segments of this interview were played on community radio in July 2016.
Speaking with: Bad Pharma author Ben Goldacre about how bad research hurts us all
Ben Goldacre says that greater transparency on research findings could increase the public's faith in essential medicines. ShutterstockWe are living in a time where we have greater access to lifesaving medicines and treatments than ever before. But we’re also seeing a surge in the rejection of the medical research and the scientific community in general, with anti-vaccination activists and climate change sceptics building followings and taking seats in government. How do we bridge the divide to those who have lost trust in science? Dr Ben Goldacre – epidemiologist, columnist and author of the books Bad Pharma and Bad Science – believes that greater transparency around the data used in research and better communication of results is the answer. And he thinks the public can understand a lot more about scientific research than either the media or academia gives them credit for. The University of New South Wales’ Dr Darren Saunders spoke to Dr Goldacre about his first forays into writing about science for The Guardian, his current project exploring reporting practices in medical journals and why he believes science communication is the answer. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music Free Music Archive - Blue Dot Sessions, Wisteria Free Music Archive - Dave Depper, “Wholesome 7” Darren Saunders receives funding from NHMRC, US Dept. of Defense, and MNDRIA.
Speaking with: Juan Francisco Salazar about colonising Antarctica and Mars
What can life on Antarctica tell us about future colonies on Mars or other planets? www.shutterstock.comLast month, a team of scientists emerged from a year-long experiment to test what survival might look like for the first colonists on Mars. But while setting up a human colony on Mars seems like a journey into the unknown, the research community in the Antarctic is already encountering – and in some cases solving – many of the same problems we might face on new worlds. And those problems are not all environmental. Dallas Rogers speaks with Western Sydney University Associate Professor Juan Francisco Salazar about his use of documentary film to study the way humans interact with each other and their environment in Antarctica, and what it might mean for colonising new planets. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcast on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio FreeSound - Morosopher, “Rumbling wind & ice skating” FreeSound - Cobratronik, “Wind Arctic Cold” Music Footage Firm Ltd - “Space Technology” Footage Firm Ltd - “Flying” Footage Firm Ltd - “Ambient Bell Music” Footage Firm Ltd - “Alien Communication Horror” Footage Firm Ltd - Ambient Swirl Footage Firm Ltd - “Universe Tune 60s” Dallas Rogers receives funding from the Community Broadcasting Foundation to produce short academic interviews for SoundMinds Radio (http://www.soundminds.com.au/author/dallas/). Segments of this interview were played on community radio in February 2016.
Speaking with: Hannah Dahlen on pregnancy care
Recent studies have revealed an emerging understanding of the benefits of birthing relationships through the childbearing process. ShutterstockRecent studies have revealed an emerging understanding of the benefits of birthing relationships through the childbearing process. Creating a healthy mental state through pregnancy, birth and postnatal care can have an important and tangible effect on the health of both child and mother. Midwifery, one of the oldest professions in the world, has been increasingly overshadowed by technological development and obstetricians. But the benefits a midwife can provide through comfort, empowerment and understanding are something that can’t (yet) be emulated by medical science. Dallas Rogers spoke with Hannah Dahlen, Professor of Midwifery and Higher Degree Research Director in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Western Sydney University, about encouraging a healthy pregnancy through relationships and empowerment, while also balancing this with traditional medical care. Dr Jacqueline Nelson, sociologist at the University of Technology Sydney and Dallas’ wife, also contributes her personal journey through her current pregnancy. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music from: Free Music Archive Using air bubbles as lenses I see the outside. I suspect the world is not what it seems by Cherly KaCherly Free Music Archive Gnossienne Nº1 by Trans Alp Free Music Archive Atlantic State of Mind (A Long Winter) by mGee Free Music Archive Conscience by New Air Dallas Rogers receives funding from the Community Broadcasting Foundation to produce short academic interviews for SoundMinds Radio (http://www.soundminds.com.au/author/dallas/). Segments of this interview were played on community radio in January 2016
Speaking with: ‘Poll Bludger’ William Bowe in the final week of the election campaign
Battle On Saturday, Australians will finally go to the polls to decide who will lead the country after one of the longest election campaigns in recent history. But no matter which major party wins government, they look set to be sharing power – particularly in the Senate – with a range of new faces from the likes of Nick Xenophon’s and Jacqui Lambie’s political parties. So, which seats should we be following with interest on election night? And how have the major parties gone at selling their policies? University of Western Australia political analyst Natalie Mast sits down again with “Poll Bludger” William Bowe to talk about how the campaign has played out and what the polls are telling us about the likely result. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio: ABC - Lateline, “‘Poll Position’: Senator Nick Xenophon” Sydney Morning Herald, “Liberal launch, instability scare” Associated Press, “European Union referendum results announcement” NSW Nationals Party, “Not this time, Tony” Liberal Party of Australia (via Sydney Morning Herald), Campaign ad Australian Labor Party, “Chloe Shorten interviews Bill” Music Free Music Archive - Blue Dot Sessions Wisteria Free Music Archive - Blue Dot Sessions, When the guests have left Free Music Archive - Blue Dot Sessions, Bouncing Free Music Archive - Circus Marcus, “La tapa del dominigo” Free Music Archive - Dave Depper, “Wholesome 7” Natalie Mast is the Chair of The Conversation's Editorial Board.
Speaking with: Deb Warr on “poverty porn”
original In May 2015 the mayor of the City of Blacktown, Stephen Bali, denounced the SBS documentary series Struggle Street – produced in the Blacktown suburb of Mount Druitt – labelling it as “public funded poverty porn” and staging a creative protest which saw a dozen garbage trucks blockade the broadcaster’s head offices. The second series of Struggle Street will be filmed in Queensland and Victoria in 2016, and there has already been significant backlash to the announced plans. While poverty porn is a term used to describe media that appears to exploit impoverished communities and individuals for entertainment, supporters of shows such as Struggle Street argue that the genre can generate sympathy, engagement and ultimately have a positive effect on the community. Dallas Rogers spoke with Deb Warr, Associate Professor from the McCaughey Centre for Community Wellbeing at the University of Melbourne, about the role the media plays in creating narratives around poverty and the importance of varied methods of engagement with impoverished communities. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional audio: ABC Lateline SBS accused of ‘poverty porn’ over documentary series Newsnight Is Channel 4’s Benefits Street ‘poverty porn’? Four Corners Growing Up Poor Benefits Street S01E01 Welcome to James Turner Street Benefits Street Theme Tune The Sydney Morning Herald Mt Druitt community leaders hurt after Struggle Street documentary Music from: Free Music Archive Headlights/Mountain Road by Blue Dot Sessions Free Music Archive Wisteria by Blue Dot Sessions Free Music Archive Werdenfelser Trompeten Landler by Strassmeir Dachaur Bauernkapelle Free Music Archive Paper Napkin by Blue Dot Sessions Dallas Rogers receives funding from the Community Broadcasting Foundation to produce short academic interviews for SoundMinds Radio (http://www.soundminds.com.au/author/dallas/). Segments of this interview were played on community radio in January 2016
Speaking with: ‘Poll Bludger’ William Bowe on the election races to watch
AAP/Tracey NearmyIn this podcast, University of Western Australia political analyst Natalie Mast speaks with “Poll Bludger” William Bowe about the election campaign so far. The conversation focuses on the latest polling and whether there is evidence of a nationwide swing large enough to unseat the Coalition government. They touch on the possible impact state issues – particularly in Western Australia and South Australia – will have on the election. William also speaks about his recent modelling of possible outcomes for the Senate. The upper house is not only facing a double-dissolution election but a new method of voting. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio: Channel Ten, 1998 Australian Federal election coverage Channel Ten, Eyewitness Newsbyte 26 April 2016 Liberal Party of Australia, Our Plan for a Strong New Economy Youtube user: Voltscomissar, Adam Bandt victory speech in full. Re-elected MHR for Melbourne. Australian Electoral Commission, Senate voting education campaign Music Free Music Archive - Blue Dot Sessions Wisteria Free Music Archive - Blue Dot Sessions, When the guests have left Free Music Archive - Jon Luc Hefferman, “Analog” Free Music Archive - Circus Marcus, “La tapa del dominigo” Free Music Archive - Circus Marcus, “La tapa del sábado” Free Music Archive - Superbus, “Dramatic” Free Music Archive - Dave Depper, “Wholesome 7” Free Music Archive - Dave Depper, “Swagger 2” Natalie Mast is chair of The Conversation's editorial board.
Speaking with: John Hattie on how to improve the quality of education in Australian schools
Smaller class sizes do not make a difference the quality of education. from www.shutterstock.comDo we actually know what works when it comes to improving the quality of education in schools? A new four-part ABC documentary series, Revolution School, looks at what the research tells us about what works in education – and what doesn’t. It tells the story of how a typical suburban high school in Victoria, Kambrya College, managed to turn around from rock bottom to being in the top 25% of study scores in the state. Smaller class sizes, private schooling, homework and discipline do not make a difference to the quality of education, explains education expert John Hattie – “what really matters is interaction with teachers, clinical teaching, constantly measuring each student’s knowledge and responding to their individual needs”. Maxine McKew speaks with John Hattie about what we need to be doing to improve the quality of education in Australian schools – and the kind of debates we really should be having. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Featured Music: Free Music Archive - Blue Dot Sessions, Wisteria Maxine McKew does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Graeme Orr on the festival of elections
original The writs have been issued, the stage has been set: Australians are about to go to an election. You can almost smell the sausages sizzling at local primary schools and scout halls, and it’s only a matter of time until the how-to-vote cards start to make their way into our hands and letterboxes. When we talk about the fundamental elements of representative democracy, we tend to defer to grand themes such as accessibility, representation, prevention against corruption, and equality. But democracy in Australia (and in other parts of the world) is as much about where we vote, when we vote and how long we have to vote as those more lofty concepts. And what about that humble sausage in bread? William Isdale speaks with professor Graeme Orr about the festival of elections, the heritage of voting in Australia and what might be lost in the culture of our democracy if we are all able to vote securely from our mobile phones at some stage in the near future. Orr’s book, Ritual and Rhythm in Electoral Systems, is out now. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio: Channel Ten, Election 2013 | Sausage steals the sizzle Channel Ten, Election Day 2013 | Labor concedes defeat | Part 1 Channel Ten, Election Day 2013 | A new Prime Minister SBS, Leaders vote on election day 2013 SBS, World News - Election Day 2010 Film Australia - Australian Biography Series, Neville Bonner - Change Channel Nine, Paul Keating’s 1993 Election Victory Speech ABC, Australia Votes 2013 Music: Free Music Archive - The Degs, “Here they come” Free Music Archive - Dave Depper, “Swagger 2” Free Music Archive - Circus Marcus, “La tapa del dominigo” Free Music Archive - Circus Marcus, “La tapa del sábado” Free Music Archive - Kai Engel, “February” Free Music Archive - Kevin MacLeod, “Master of the feast’ Free Music Archive - Blue Dot Sessions, "Micro” Free Music Archive - Blue Dot Sessions, “Bouncing” Free Music Archive - Psychadelik Pedestrian, “Pacific” Free Music Archive, Dave Depper, “Wholesome 7” William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Rhonda Itaoui on navigating the city as a young Muslim
RTR I MJ The terror attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, changed the way we think about politics, society and safety as the world entered the 21st century. But as the world learned the identities of the attackers, the response affected one community much more acutely: Muslims. The media coverage of the 2001 attack and other subsequent incidents in our region, including the Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney’s Martin Place in December 2014, increased the feeling among many in the Muslim community that they are not welcome or safe in the Australian cities that they call home. So, in this increasingly tense climate, how does it feel to navigate the city as a young Muslim? Dallas Rogers spoke with Western Sydney University PhD candidate Rhonda Itaoui about her research examining the Islamophobia young Muslims experience in Australia. She also explores her own experiences as a young Muslim woman and the success of campaigns like #illridewithyou in countering Islamophobia. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Additional Audio: Emily Eaton, BayFM, voiceover for the text message conversation Sarah Long, BayFM, voiceover for the text message conversation ABC News The Sydney siege as it unfolded 9 NEWS Social Media Campaign supporting Muslims goes viral The Verdict Mark Latham targets western Sydney Music from: Free Music Archive Cylinder Seven by Chris Zabriskie Free Music Archive La tapa del miércoles by Circus Marcus Free Music Archive Bumble by Podington Bear Free Music Archive Pacific by Psychadelik Pedestrian Free Music Archive Impact Prelude by Kevin MacLeod Dallas Rogers receives funding from the Community Broadcasting Foundation to produce short academic interviews for SoundMinds Radio (http://www.soundminds.com.au/author/dallas/). Segments of this interview were played on community radio on 01/12/2015
Speaking with: Lucy Turnbull on the Greater Sydney Commission
In late 2015, the Greater Sydney Commission was established to oversee metropolitan planning and development in Sydney. The commission is intended to function as a partnership between state and local governments, with both the power to create overarching planning proposals and the mandate to work with local governments on local planning controls. NSW Premier Mike Baird has tasked the commission with delivering 680,000 new homes by 2031, with the aim of tackling the city’s unfolding housing affordability crisis. In December, Lucy Turnbull was announced as the inaugural chief commissioner for the Greater Sydney Commission. In addition to a successful career in commercial law and investment banking, Turnbull has a history in local government – in 2003 she became the first female lord mayor of Sydney – and is the author of the 1999 book Sydney: Biography of a City. Since 2010 she has been the deputy chair of the Coalition of Australian Governments’ City Expert Advisory Panel. Dallas Rogers spoke with Lucy Turnbull on the establishment of the Greater Sydney Commission, its structure, plans and mandate from the premier, as well as criticism from some urban planning experts that the commission is an undemocratic “top-down” approach to development. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music from Free Music Archive: Liquor Files - Treacle by Blue Dot Sessions. Further reading: “Participatory, technocratic and neoliberal planning: an untenable planning governance ménage à trois” by Laura Schatz and Dallas Rogers in Australian Planner. “Monitory Democracy as Citizen-driven Participatory Planning: The Urban Politics of Redwatch in Sydney” by Dallas Rogers in Urban Policy and Research. Dallas Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Shanthi Robertson and Ien Ang on migrants, refugees and Australia’s place in Asia
Australia's policies on asylum seekers have been criticised by many countries at the UN's Human Rights Council. Department of ImmigrationAustralia’s refugee and border protection policies have been in the spotlight again this week as riots broke out at the Christmas Island detention centre following the unexplained death of an escaped asylum seeker. The incident happened just prior to a review of Australia’s human rights record at the UN Human Rights Council. Many countries criticised Australia’s tough stance on asylum seekers, and called on the government to end its policy of boat turnbacks, mandatory detention and offshore processing. These are the latest episodes in Australia’s long and turbulent history with immigration. From the White Australia policy to Vietnamese refugees to the current turning back of boats, the treatment of migrants and refugees has long been controversial and divisive in Australia. Dallas Rogers spoke with Shanthi Robertson and Ien Ang about national identities and the role migrants, refugees and borders will play in Australia during the so-called Asian century. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music from Free Music Archive: Night Owl by Broke For Free, 2044 by Alasdair Cooper, Dream (instrumental) by Chan Wai Fat, and Lo Ka Ping. Additional audio: BBC News, RN Breakfast (ABC Radio National), Q&A (ABC TV), RT News, Reuters, Department of Immigration and Border Protection, ABC Lateline, The Australian Government. Dallas Rogers receives funding from the Community Broadcasting Foundation to produce short academic interviews for SoundMinds Radio (www.soundminds.com.au). Shorter segments of these interviews were played on community radio on 03/11/2015.
Speaking with: Aric Bendorf on how to increase organ donation rates in Australia
Despite having a higher than average rate of viable donors, Australia’s organ donation rate is lower than much of the developed world. from www.shutterstock.comRoughly 1,600 people are currently on waiting lists to receive an organ transplant in Australia. But for many, the wait will be unsuccessful due to the low number of donors. Australia was once a world leader in organ donations, but today its organ donation rate is lower than much of the developed world. The country ranks 20th in the world for donations, despite having a higher than average rate of potential donors, and sits below world leaders such as Spain, Belgium, France and the USA. Australia’s approach has been to focus on signing up more people to be donors and on encouraging families to consent to donation after the death of a relative. But if Australia wants to be world-leading, that’s not enough. William Isdale spoke with Aric Bendorf about what needs to change if Australia is to, once again, become a leader in organ donation. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Kai Engel - The Idea Additional audio: Sunrise (Channel 7), Organ and Tissue Authority, The World Today (ABC Radio National) William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Meg Urry on supermassive black holes
Supermassive black holes, containing as much mass as millions or billions of suns, exist at the centre of all galaxies, including our own Milky Way. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY-SABlack holes are incredibly strange phenomena: a collapsed star packed into a tiny region of space. Their gravitational force is so strong that not even light can escape. So it is not surprising that, for a long time, black holes were not thought to actually exist – they were only a theoretical possibility. But today, not only do we realise that black holes are relatively common in the universe, we also know that there are black holes lurking in the centre of all galaxies – including our own Milky Way Galaxy. These black holes, called supermassive black holes, can pack the mass of millions or billions of suns into a region smaller than our solar system. Tanya Hill spoke to Meg Urry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Yale University and currently the President of the American Astronomical Society, about distant galaxies and the supermassive black holes that can be found in their centre. This podcast includes excerpts from Museum Victoria’s Black Holes: Journey into the Unknown, narrated by Geoffrey Rush. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Kai Engel - The Scope Additional audio: Museum Victoria, Fox News (US), BBC Worldwide, Sky News (Australia) Tanya Hill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: the Poll Bludger William Bowe on the Canning byelection
Liberal candidate Andrew Hastie has campaigned strongly on local issues. Richard Wainwright/AAPThis Saturday’s Canning byelection has turned from being a poll on Tony Abbott to being a test of both new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Political analyst Natalie Mast spoke with “Poll Bludger” William Bowe about what Monday’s leadership spill will mean for the vote in Canning. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Blue Dot Sessions: Castro Additional audio: Channel 7 News, ABC News Natalie Mast is Chair of the Editorial Board of The Conversation.
Speaking with: Lawrence Gostin on Ebola, the WHO and the future of global health
Who ya gonna call? The World Health Organization has been criticised for its poor response to last year's Ebola outbreak. Ahmed Jallanzo/AAPThe recent Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa occurred in three of the poorest and least resourced countries in the world. And as Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia all struggled with the epidemic, it was clear a global response was needed to contain the disease. But the response, led by the World Health Organization, has been widely criticised for being too slow and inadequate, and over 11,000 people have died from the epidemic. While there is relief that the outbreak now seems contained, how will the world respond to the next global health crisis? William Isdale spoke with Lawrence Gostin about the lessons we can learn from the Ebola epidemic and the future of global health. This interview was made by possible by the Australian Centre for Health Law Research at the Queensland University of Technology. Professor Gostin was in Brisbane as a guest of the Centre. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Kai Engel - The Scope Additional audio: ABS News (US), BBC News, CNN, ABC News (Australia) William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Naomi Klein on capitalism and climate change
Noami Klein speaking in Sydney. Christopher Wright, Author providedIn her latest book, This Changes Everything (2014), the Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein tackles the issue of climate change through a familiar prism: capitalism. She argues that unrestrained capitalism is the root of the problem and that the global response to climate change has, thus far, been shaped by wealth and power. Christopher Wright spoke to Naomi Klein on the eve of her appearance at the Sydney Festival of Dangerous Ideas about the impact of capitalism on the climate, and how grassroots movements – not market-based approaches – hold the key to tackling the all-pervading problem of climate change. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Broke For Free Additional audio: AFP, NBC News, ABC News Christopher Wright is a member of the Academy of Management The academy is a funding partner of The Conversation US. Christopher Wright has received funding from the Australian Research Council. Christopher Wright is an Academy of Management scholar.
Speaking with: Crystal Legacy on the politics of transport infrastructure
Congested roads and overcrowded public transport services are common problems in many of our cities. Dam Himbeechts/AAP As anyone who travels to work would probably realise, Australia’s transport infrastructure needs urgent upgrades. As our cities continue to grow, it is virtually impossible to escape the tangle of peak-hour congestion. But with governments focused on reducing deficits, only one or two transport infrastructure projects are likely to be implemented. So how are decisions about which infrastructure to build made? And how much of a say do the people who actually use the transport system have in which projects are prioritised? Dallas Rogers spoke with Crystal Legacy about the politics of transport infrastructure, and the role urban planning can play in democratising the process of funding and implementing projects. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Blue Dot Sessions: Union Hall, Transfusion by Anitek, Run the Tape by Asthmatic Astronaut (CC BY-NC) Additional audio: The Today Show (Channel 9), Channel 10 News, ABC News, Nine News, Channel 7 News, GreenLeftTV (Sydney Protests Against the WestConnex Project) Dallas Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Hayley Saul and Emma Waterton on the Nepal earthquake and the everyday Nepalese hero
It will be many years before life returns to normal in the Langtang valley, one of the regions worst-affected by the earthquakes in Nepal. Scott Mattoon/flickr, CC BY-SAHayley Saul and Emma Waterton were doing anthropological field work in the Langtang valley in Nepal when the devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake hit on April 25 this year, killing more than 9,000 people. At the time of the quake, they were with several local guides from the village of Langtang, now dubbed “the worst affected” area in Nepal. Saul and Waterton were recording local oral histories. They were interested in how these local stories were written into the Himalayan landscape. It was their guides’ knowledge of the landscape, their humble acts of bravery and kindness that saved Saul and Waterton’s lives many times over two tough days, and enabled them to reach safety. Saul and Waterton would witness many acts of courage and heroism after the earthquake, which was often not reported by the overseas media that tended to focus on the quake’s impact on tourists and climbers on Everest. Dallas Rogers spoke to them about their research in Nepal, the earthquake, their rescue over two days, and the everyday Nepalese hero. Since returning to Australia, Saul and Waterton have been fundraising to assist the displaced villagers of Langtang in collaboration with Community Action Nepal. You can read about their story and find out more about their relief efforts here: Langtang Survivors. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Gallery Six, OCP, Edoardo Romani Capelo (Free Music Archive) Additional news audio: BBC News, ABC News, CBS News. Dallas Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Anthony D'Costa on the challenges facing India’s economy
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised economic growth and good times ahead for India, but faces many challenges. Jane Dempster/AAPRecent IMF and World Bank forecasts show that India’s economy could take over from China as the world’s fastest growing economy in the next two years. The two organisations’ tick of approval for the Modi government’s development agenda comes just over a year after Narendra Modi lead the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to a landslide win in the 2014 Indian elections, securing 282 seats and gaining majority control of the lower house – something that no other single party has done since 1984. The election result was unthinkable a few years ago. Under the previous Congress party government, India had seven years of GDP growth of around 8% or more, and India was seen as the next emerging economic power after China. But the growth faltered and a series of major corruption scandals destroyed the credibility of the Congress government. By the time of the 2014 elections, Indians, who had become accustomed to economic growth and its flow-on benefits, seemed desperate for change and the expectations on Narendra Modi are enormous, with both businesses and the electorate hoping that he can replicate his successes as chief minister of the state of Gujarat. But despite the economic growth, Modi faces a number of challenges to deliver on his promise of good times ahead for India. Inadequate infrastructure, massive skill shortages and high levels of illiteracy will all hinder efforts to generate the millions of jobs needed to cater for the influx of young people entering the workforce. The Conversation spoke with Anthony D'Costa about the economic challenges facing the Modi government and India. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Vinod Prasanna, Free Music Archive/Sunny Jain’s Red Baraat Festival, Free Music Archive/Blue Dot Sessions: Castro (CC BY-NC) Additional news audio: BBC News, ABC Lateline, Bloomberg TV, CNBC, Al Jazeera, Press TV, and ABC News 24.
Speaking with: Hazel Easthope on designing for high density living
Australian cities are increasingly building up rather than building out. AAP/Joel CarrettAustralia’s growing population has put enormous pressure on the housing market within the major cities, which have expanded further and further out. But new settlements on the urban fringe require governments to invest in costly new infrastructure, and states such as Victoria and New South Wales have started to build up, rather than build out. This effort to combat urban sprawl has lead to a rapid growth in the number of high density housing being built closer to existing infrastructure. This presents unique challenges: noisy neighbours, smaller living areas, more shared spaces, and increased burdens on existing infrastructure. Dallas Rogers spoke with Hazel Easthope about the benefits and challenges of high density housing, and the mix of design, build and social considerations needed to create sustainable urban living environments. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Podington Bear: Daydream (CC BY-NC) Additional audio: Today Tonight (Channel 7), ABC News, and Sky News Australia Dallas Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Jason Dittmer on superheroes and fascism
Captain America was one of several nationalistic superheroes created during the Second World War era. © MarvelSuperhero films are big business. Avengers: Age of Ultron recently passed US$1 billion in box office sales. The first Avengers film is currently third in all-time box office rankings. The popularity and success of Batman, Ironman and the Avengers have contributed to a revival of the American superhero on the big screen. And though the latest films may seem like modern superhero narratives, the themes that make them relevant today stretch back to the 1930s and 40s, and the environment that gave rise to the first superheroes: the great depression, an undercurrent of fascism in America, and the looming Second World War. Dallas Rogers speaks with Jason Dittmer on the continued relevance of superheroes in both popular and political culture, and the influence of fascism and geopolitical forces on the superhero narrative. Jason Dittmer is the author of Captain America and the Nationalist Superhero: Metaphors, Narratives, and Geopolitics. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Podington Bear: Fathomless (CC BY-NC) and Blue Dot Sessions: Modul Kalimba (CC BY-NC) See also: After Avengers: Age of Ultron, we really don’t need another hero Up, up and away? The future of the comic book movie Dallas Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Keith Jacobs on the politics of housing
Record-low interest rates could further inflate the housing markets in Sydney and Melbourne. Paul Miller/AAPThe Reserve Bank cut interest rates to 2% on Tuesday hoping to stimulate business investment and household spending. The RBA’s decision was welcomed by Treasurer Joe Hockey, but there are concerns the record-low rate will further inflate the already heated housing markets in Sydney and Melbourne. The Economist magazine recently evaluated Australia’s housing market to be overvalued by more than 25% (along with Britain and Canada). Even accounting for our higher incomes, Australia’s house prices are now among the highest in the world. While there is sympathy for the difficulties faced by would-be first-time homebuyers, a strong housing market is often associated with jobs and revenue for States and Territories (the economies of both New South Wales and Victoria have strengthened significantly partly due to the housing sector). Rising house prices are also good news for many Australians – more than 60% are owner-occupiers - and successive governments have implemented and maintained policies that promote a buoyant housing sector. Policies such as negative gearing, the first home owners grant, and capital gains tax concessions have helped many middle and high income earners buy property, but how are these policies impacting low income earners? Dallas Rogers speaks with Keith Jacobs about the politics of housing in Australia, and how to address the inequalities within the current system. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Blue Dot Sessions: Stingray (CC BY-NC) Additional audio: A Home of their Own, National Sound and Film Archive Dallas Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Peter Singer on effective altruism
Australian moral philosopher Peter Singer is a strong advocate of effective altruism, and has written a book on the movement called The Most Good You Can Do. Birkbeck Media Services/flickr, CC BY-NC-NDAustralians are among the most charitable people in the world, donating around A$2.4 billion a year. But how can we ensure the money we donate is used as effectively as possible? There are more than 60,000 registered charities in Australia, ranging from international NGOs to environmental organisations. While most appeal to our emotions when fundraising, someone wanting to have the greatest positive impact could equally apply reason, mathematics and moral philosophy when deciding who, and what, they donate to. Effective altruism is a social and philosophical movement that tries to provide a rational framework for deciding how we should spend our money and time (including which careers we should pursue) in order to do the most good. Australian philosopher Peter Singer is a vocal champion of the movement, and has recently written a book on effective altruism called The Most Good You Can Do. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Blue Dot Sessions: Glacier Quartet (CC BY-NC) Additional audio: The Centre for Effective Altruism William Isdale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Cameron McAuliffe on graffiti, art and crime
Many cities are starting to recognise that street art has both a cultural and economic value. SalTheColourGeek/Flickr, CC BY-SAIs graffiti art or crime? The modern form of graffiti made its way to Australia from the US in the 1980s, and it quickly was characterised as a blight on our urban landscapes. Classified as vandalism, many cities adopted tough legal measures to deter graffiti artists from tagging walls and trains. Today, the situation largely remains the same. Graffiti is still illegal. The city of Hobart recently “declared a war” on graffiti, as have many other cities and councils. Even US film director David Lynch is reported to have said that graffiti “has pretty much ruined the world” at a recent speech at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art. But at the same time, cities have also begun to value and promote street art - effectively a legal form of graffiti. Street art is now recognised as having both cultural and economic value, and many graffiti artists have transitioned to take advantage of this legal recognition of their practice. Dallas Rogers speaks with Cameron McAuliffe about the relationship between graffiti and street art, and the value of these art forms to the urban environment and the economies of our cities. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Shadow Priest: Street Theatre (CC BY-NC-ND) Dallas Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Joanne Orlando on children and technology
A traditionalist view of childhood has created certain fears among adults regarding children and technology. www.shutterstock.comIs technology bad for kids? As more devices and software applications are made specifically for an increasingly younger audience, there is concern about the appropriateness of children using technology – and debate over when it should be introduced into their lives. Yet at the same time, personal devices and touch screens are everywhere. Kids love them for the same reasons we do, and many argue that learning to use them will likely be important to their education and employment prospects later in life. Tamson Pietsch speaks with Joanne Orlando, an expert on educational technology at the University of Western Sydney, about the increased use of technology by children and the potential impact on child development. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Podington Bear: Yearning Tamson Pietsch receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Speaking with: David Tiley on funding Australian films
Many Australian films have significant cultural capital that should also be considered when measuring their level of success. ShutterstockThe Australian Film Commission (AFC) was founded with a budget of A$6.5 million in 1975 with the hope of revitalising the Australian film industry to a point where it could sustain itself without government support. The funding resulted in what is now generally regarded as the “golden age” of Australian cinema in the 1970s and 80s. But even today, most Australian films are still primarily funded through government bodies such as Screen Australia (the successor to the AFC) and through tax offsets. Despite the release of many critically-acclaimed films in 2014 (The Babadook, Charlie’s Country, and The Infinite Man, among others), ticket sales were relatively low. Australians don’t watch enough local films to sustain the industry without substantial government support. And yet the success of Australian films can’t be measured on box office numbers alone. Vincent O’Donnell speaks with David Tiley, editor of the online industry magazine ScreenHub, about financing film production in Australia and measuring success by looking beyond the box office. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/ Blue Dot Sessions: Farsical Recorded in the studios of RMIT University. Vincent O'Donnell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Shanthi Robertson on the changing face of migration
Australia has changed from primarily being a destination for permanent settlers to having an increasing number of temporary arrivals. Ben Beiske/Flickr (modified), CC BY-NC-SAImmigration is a contentious topic in many parts of the world, and the debate in Australia has been predictably framed around asylum seekers, the burdens on taxpayers and the protection of local jobs. This narrow focus has meant migrants are often divided into categories of “good” and “bad”. The reality is a lot more complex and nuanced. For much of Australia’s history, most migrants were permanent settlers. Now, increasing numbers of temporary visitors – students, working holiday makers and temporary workers – are arriving. The shift in the nature of migration and the make-up of migrants has had significant flow-on effects on the economy and society which are often forgotten. Dallas Rogers speaks with Shanthi Robertson about the changing face of migration in Australia and the complex relationships between governments, migrants and commercial industries throughout the migration process. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Blue Dot Sessions: Liquor Files Dallas Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Tim Jones on child sexual abuse within religious institutions
Religious institutions have consistently struggled to respond to child sexual abuse cases appropriately. L'Osservatore Romano/EPAThe Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse reconvened this week. Announced in 2012, the commission was established due to growing concerns over consistently inadequate responses to child abuse cases by institutions. Although the current Royal Commission is focused on cases within living memory in a wide range of institutions, the hearings reveal that Australian churches have a long and sad history of abuse and cover-up. Religious interpretations, changing legal definitions and evolving societal attitudes have all influenced the way child sexual abuse has been handled within churches and in the wider community. Tamson Pietsch speaks to Tim Jones about child sexual abuse within Australian religious institutions, and how the current debate has been framed by past events. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Music: Free Music Archive/Kai Engel. Tamson Pietsch receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Speaking with: Kerry Brown on China, Australia and diplomacy
Australia’s ability to influence China will largely depend on how it engages with China’s complex and growing diplomatic machinery. ShutterstockThe emergence of China as a 21st-century superpower has already had profound impacts on Australia. As China reshapes the balance of power, not only in the Asia-Pacific region but globally, its influence on Australia is likely to increase. China’s economic and military growth will also challenge the world’s other superpower – and Australia’s traditional security ally – the United States. Caught between these two superpowers, Australia’s ability to manage this difficult diplomatic balancing act could well determine its future prosperity and security. Tamson Pietsch speaks with Kerry Brown, executive director of the China Studies Centre, about Australia’s place in the Chinese Century and the role diplomacy has to play. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes, or follow on Tunein Radio. Image: Shutterstock Music: Free Music Archive/Kindread, Lo Ka Ping and Chan Wai Fat. Tamson Pietsch receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Speaking with: Duane Hamacher on Indigenous astronomy
The science of astronomy has existed for thousands of years and forms a vital part of Indigenous Australian culture. Ben Ashmole/flickr, CC BY-NCAboriginal and Torres Strait islander people have between 40,000 and 60,000 years of pre-colonial history that includes stories of constellations they observed in the night sky and traditions that align with the stars and the moon. But until recently, these stories were largely dismissed by the scientific community. Researchers are now finding that Indigenous oral traditions contain vast environmental and scientific intelligence. These complex knowledge systems have helped Indigenous people survive Australia for tens of thousands of years. Tamson Pietsch speaks with cultural astronomer Duane Hamacher about Indigenous astronomy and its complex relationship to history, culture and applied scientific knowledge. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes. Image: flickr/Ben Ashmole Music: Free Music Archive/Chris Zabriskie Tamson Pietsch receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Speaking with: Nicole Gurran on affordable housing
Australia needs look at inclusionary housing policies to boost the number of affordable housing options. AAP/Joel CarrettAustralia’s residential house prices rank among the highest in the world, and an increasing number of aspiring home owners are finding themselves locked out of the property market. While low interest rates and higher wages have somewhat tempered the impact of high house prices, these factors have not helped low-income earners, who continue to struggle to find housing within their budget. One possible solution is to use urban planning policies, such as inclusionary housing, to boost the number of affordable dwellings. Such policies have been successful in other countries, but are yet to be effectively adopted in Australia. Dallas Rogers speaks with Nicole Gurran about how other countries are using inclusionary housing policies and the lessons for Australia. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes. Music: Free Music Archive/Podington Bear and Jahzzar Dallas Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Sarah Sorial on free speech and democracy
CeBIT Australia/Flickr, CC BY-SAFreedom of speech is often seen as a cornerstone of democracy, but the unfettered right to express opinions can infringe other fundamental rights. Minority groups are especially at risk of verbal attacks and intimidation, and some countries, including Australia, have legislated protections that limit free speech. When Attorney-General George Brandis ordered a review of the Racial Discrimination Act and introduced amendments in a failed attempt to remove some of these protections in March this year, he ignited a passionate debate on the importance of free speech and its intersection with other human rights. In this podcast, Tamson Pietsch speaks with Sarah Sorial about the role of free speech in a democracy and how it can co-exist with other rights. Sarah Sorial is a senior lecturer at the University of Wollongong who is researching the limits of free speech and deliberative democracy. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes. Image: flickr/CeBIT Australia Music: Free Music Archive/Podington Bear Tamson Pietsch receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Speaking with: Steve Kilbey, lead singer of The Church
Singer, songwriter, poet and writer, Steve Kilbey has recently released his memoir, Something Quite Peculiar. debra/Flickr, CC BY-NCBassist and lead singer of The Church, Steve Kilbey is one of Australia’s most prolific musicians. The band released their 25th album, Further Deeper, in October and will play The Queenscliff Music Festival this Saturday. Kilbey speaks with Andrea Baker about his recently released memoir, Something Quite Peculiar, which describes his rise to fame, his heroin addiction and The Church’s resurgence. Please note: This podcast contains mature themes and may not be suitable for younger listeners. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes. Image: flickr/debra Music reproduced with the permission of the artist. Andrea Jean Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Nick Rowley on democracy in Antarctica
Alan Light/FlickrAntarctica is the coldest, driest and possibly the most inhospitable place on Earth. It is also the only continent designated entirely as a natural reserve, used purely for peaceful and scientific purposes. For many decades, Antarctica has been the final frontier for scientific research, governed by a treaty system signed in 1959, that protects the continent from exploitation and military action. But as countries begin to eye off Antarctica’s wealth of natural resources, will this be enough to stop territorial disputes in the region? Tamson Pietsch speaks with Nick Rowley about democracy on Earth’s coldest continent. Nick Rowley is an Adjunct Professor at the Sydney Democracy Network at the University of Sydney; he is currently working on a project on Antarctic decision-making. Subscribe to The Conversation’s Speaking With podcasts on iTunes. Image: flickr/Alan Light Music: Free Music Archive/Podington Bear, Chris Zabriskie Tamson Pietsch receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
Speaking with: George Galster on revitalising Detroit
Detroit, a thriving manufacturing city 50 years ago, is now bankrupt. ifmuth/Flickr, CC BY-NDDetroit is in turmoil, officially bankrupt and home to some of America’s poorest citizens. But 50 years ago it was thriving, boasting a booming manufacturing sector and a steadily growing educated middle-class. What happened? Dallas Rogers speaks with George Galster on the fallout from the decline of the automotive industry, and the glimmer of hope new urban projects offer this troubled city. George Galster is a professor in the department of Urban Studies and Planning at Wayne State University and the author of Driving Detroit: The Quest for Respect in the Motor City. Player Image: Flickr/ifmuth Music: Free Music Archive/BLEO, Podington Bear, Jahzzar Listen to other podcast episodes here. Dallas Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Scott McKinnon on LGBTI issues during natural disasters
The LGBTI community has unique needs that are often overlooked during the response and recovery stages of a natural disaster event. euphoriadev via Flickr, CC BY-NC-NDWhen natural disasters strike, the impact varies significantly across different social groups, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) communities are poorly accounted for in disaster management policy and practice. Dallas Rogers speaks with Scott McKinnon on the different needs of the LGBTI community during a natural disaster event, and how emergency services, policy-makers and aid agencies can better respond to LGBTI populations. Scott McKinnon is a Research Fellow on an Australian Research Council funded project investigating the experiences of LGBTI people in natural disasters. If you have found any of the issues raised in this discussion to be distressing or traumatic, we strongly suggest contacting a trained counsellor. Counsellors are available through the following services: QLife - Ph: 1800 184 527 (free call, including mobiles), 5.30pm-10.30pm, 7 days Lifeline - Ph: 13 11 14 (24 hours, 7 days) If you identify as LGBTI, have been impacted by a disaster and would like to share your experiences with the researchers, please contact Scott McKinnon: s.mckinnon@uws.edu.au Listen to other podcast episodes here. Scott McKinnon receives funding from The Australian Research Council.
Speaking with: journalist Masha Gessen on Putin’s Russia
‘I wouldn’t call it a miracle, I’d call it an accident’ – Gessen on Putin’s formative experience with the KGB. Christchurch City LibrariesRussian-American writer and LGBT activist, Masha Gessen has covered every major development in Russian politics and culture of the past two decades. She is the author of Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot (2014), as well as six other books, including the international bestseller The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (2012). Here, Judith Armstrong talks to Gessen about protest and politics in Putin’s Russia. See also: Why we underestimate Putin, according to Masha Gessen Masha Gessen is appearing at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival tonight and tomorrow and is also a guest of the Sydney Opera House Festival of Dangerous Ideas over the weekend. Read more coverage of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. Listen to other podcast episodes here. Judith Armstrong does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Robert Picard on democratising the media
Social and digital media perform a function that is humanising by connecting people and allowing freedom of expression. Icons from ShutterstockIs social media really delivering on its promise of democratising communication? Or have we just replaced one model that privileges those with power for another? Dr Andrea Carson speaks with Professor Robert Picard, one of the world’s leading academics on government communication policies and media economics. Listen to other podcast episodes here. Andrea Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: singer-songwriter Mark Seymour
'Shoehorning your imagination into the condition of another human being is the A game in songwriting.' Mark Seymour, AAP/ MG PromotionsAt the Melbourne Writers’ Festival this week, a panel of poets, writers and performers will read and reflect on the poetry of the first world war. Among them is Mark Seymour, the former frontman of Hunters & Collectors and a fixture on the Australian music scene for the past three decades. Here, Andrea Baker talks to Seymour about his life-long fascination with war, the manipulation of language in songwriting, and saving Nick Cave on stage. Mark Seymour is appearing at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival on Sunday August 31 at 2pm at Words & War: Passing Bells – The Poetry of World War One and playing at the Flying Saucer Club on Saturday August 30. Read more coverage of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. Listen to other podcast episodes here. Andrea Jean Baker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: food critic Ruth Reichl
'Cooking is what makes us human'. Flickr Ruth Reichl MWF Ruth Reichl, the former restaurant critic of The New York Times and author of best-selling gourmet memoirs Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me with Apples, is known for describing, in vivid detail, how food can define us. While in Australia this week, to discuss her first novel Delicious! at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, Reichl talks with food researcher Isabelle de Solier about why food really matters, the social contract of inviting people to dinner, “industrial food” and the importance of getting people back into the kitchen. Ruth Reichl will be appearing at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival on Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 August. Details here. Read more coverage of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. Listen to other podcast episodes here. Full transcript Isabelle de Solier (IDS): My name is Isabelle de Solier and welcome to The Conversation podcast. I’m speaking with food critic Ruth Reichl, who’s in Australia for the Melbourne Writers’ Festival where she will be discussing her first novel Delicious! and sharing tips on the art of food writing and restaurant criticism. Ruth, welcome. Let me start by asking you about the significance of food in our lives. What’s your response when people say, “it’s just food”? Why does food matter? Ruth Reichl (RR): Oh that’s such a big question. The quickest way to answer this is when I went for a tour through San Quentin Prison, they told me that they made sure that, in this high security prison, they had really good food because all riots in prisons started in the cafeteria. And the truth is that food is the primary concern of people, you need food and water to exist and it drives just about everything else in our lives. It drives our social relations, it drives our politics, it drives the way we connect to each other, it drives the environment. And if you don’t care about food, you ultimately really don’t care about life. You can not care about flavour, which would be a shame because you would be denying yourself a great pleasure. But to not care about food, to not think about food, to not think about what it means today that half the world has too much to eat and the other half doesn’t have enough to eat is to really not understand the major problems of the world. And down the road, I mean as we’re speaking, I mean we’re in like, one of the most horrific times that I can think of, certainly in my lifetime, I mean there are horrible things happening all over the world. The Middle East is exploding, America at the moment is having race problems, but that’s nothing compared to the coming issues we are going to be having with water. You know, if you don’t think about those things, you’re really denying what’s important in life. IDS: I think part of the critique often directed at food culture today is that it epitomises consumerism, and in the research that I did with amateur foodies for my book, Food and the Self, I found that producing food, in terms of cooking it was more important to them, and held a higher value for them than just consuming it in restaurants. I’d like to know what your thoughts are on this and if you think there’s been a return to cooking and production in food culture as opposed to more of an obsession with restaurants and consumption in the 80s. RR: Well, I think you can divide this in two ways. If you think about producing food, is there a return to gardening? Yes. Is there a return to young people being interested in farming, which I mean, we’re losing farmers at an incredible rate, now we have a generation of smart young people who are interested in farming again. That’s all to the good. Are we losing cooking? Sadly, we are. You know, I’m kind of shocked at how little knowledge young people have about how to produce food and I feel like one of the real things that we need to be doing is getting people back into the kitchen. Getting people comfortable, I mean, cooking is easy! It is my belief that it is man’s natural activity. You know, it’s like what makes us human. We cook, they don’t. Cooking is also the most generous impulse. I mean people cook as a form of an expression of love, I mean it’s a generosity to want to feed people and I am really hoping for a time when this sort of foodie obsession with running to the newest restaurant will come around to an obsession with feeding people. One of the reasons I stopped being a restaurant critic was that I was increasingly disturbed by the amount of private time people were spending in public spaces. It’s a very different thing to meet people in a restaurant. To say “meet me at a restaurant for a meal”, than to say “come to my house for dinner.” Because when you say come to my house for dinner you are not just saying come to my house, I’m going to cook for you, you are sharing your life, you are opening yourself up, you are becoming vulnerable. I mean, people come to your house and they see if you are messy, if you have good taste, if your children have manners, if your animals are disciplined, it’s a kind of vulnerability that we are no longer ready to risk. So, I’m hoping for people to start cooking again for so many reasons. More than just it’s a wonderful thing to know how to cook, it’s a very pleasurable thing, there’s nothing nicer than having people around your table, there’s nothing more comforting than knowing that you know how to feed your family on very little money, which you need to know how to cook to do. But it’s bigger than that. The whole social contract that happens around a table, it’s very different in a restaurant than it is in a home. IDS: One of the main changes in the sphere of restaurant reviewing in recent times has been the emergence of online amateur food criticism, and in particular, food bloggers. How do you view amateur restaurant bloggers? RR: You know there are many ways of doing a restaurant review. Restaurant criticism is no different to any other kind of criticism. The primary purpose of a good critic is to enhance the experience for the reader. So if you read a really good critique and you go to a museum, you see that art in a different way. And with restaurant criticism, with a really good critique, you go to that restaurant prepared to experience that food in a richer way. You’ve learned something about, you know, where this food comes from, where the chef comes from, where it fits into the history of restaurants. The kind of blogging reviews that happen are essentially consumer reports. They’re … go spend your money here or don’t spend your money there. And what I like about them is that as a consumer of those kind of critiques, you need to use your own judgement. You need to be able to triangulate between: this is probably a friend of the chef, it’s his mother, this is a disgruntled person who is probably a jerk. You need to like read them and bring your own intelligence to it. And the other side of it is that it has made the professional critics better. I mean I think, certainly in the United States right now, we have the best restaurant critics we have ever had. I mean they are the most knowledgeable, the best writers, the most interesting group of restaurant critics we have ever had. Because restaurant critics used to able to just be consumer reporters. I mean if you look at Craig Claiborne, who essentially invented restaurant criticism in the United States, all he was really doing was saying was “spend your money here, don’t spend your money there”, and if you look at the evolution of it and you look at say, Jonathan Gold who was the only American ever to win a Pulitzer for restaurant criticism. I mean what he brings to it is so incredible. He’s comparing food to music, he’s putting in context, if he’s eaten, you know if he’s writes about a taco he’s comparing it to every other taco in LA. IDS: When you were working as a restaurant critic, especially the New York Times, you were often described, in terms of the cliche, as having the power to make or break a restaurant. How did you handle this kind of power and responsibility as a critic? What kind of ethics do you think structured your reviewing? RR: If you believe that criticism is important, and that’s a big “if”, but if you believe it’s important, it’s important to be fair. And being fair means saying something is bad when it’s bad. Although always acknowledging that what you are talking about is basically something that’s going on in your mouth, I mean it’s like, it’s your idea of bad. But what I kept, a photograph of a young couple who only got to go out once a year. And they saved their money all year and they went out for a really great meal and they went out on their anniversary. And I imagined that I had written a very nice review of a place that wasn’t very good, and that they went and spent their money at this restaurant and were very disappointed and they were my reader. And my responsibility was to them, not to the restaurant. They were the people who were paying my salary. And every time I was tempted to pull my punches, I’d look at that photograph and think: they’re going to be disappointed. And, it’s hard to do. I mean you don’t want to, if you are a normal human being, your inclination is not to be be mean and to close restaurants and to put people out of work. On the other hand, that couple, it’s not fair to them if you’re saying this restaurant is good when it just isn’t. IDS: Another thing when you worked as a restaurant critic for The New York Times, you decided to wear disguises when visiting restaurants so you wouldn’t be recognised and given preferential treatment. Some of your identities included Molly, a frumpy blonde and Brenda, a bohemian redhead. How were your various characters treated differently, and what do you think it revealed about prejudice towards different kinds of people in society? RR: Well, certainly Betty, my frumpy little old lady, was treated like dirt in every restaurant she went to. But the other thing that it taught me was that we’re basically in control of how the world perceives us. Betty was a little old lady, but so was my mother - who I also turned myself into - and she knew, that if you are going to go to an expensive restaurant, you dress up. You demand respect. And part of, for me, I mean it was fascinating, because I had never really cared about clothing or what I looked like and I didn’t really feel like I was in control of it. But doing all of these disguises was so odd because I would put on all of these disguises but inside I was still me. But what happens is that people respond to what they’re seeing. And suddenly, I would respond to their response. And so suddenly I would be wild Brenda, who was lovely. I mean she was just the loveliest person, I mean my family liked Brenda better than they liked me! She was so nice, I mean nothing ever bothered her. She was the ultimate “you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”, and I realised that we are in control of how we get treated. And you know, if you go to a fancy restaurant in shabby clothes, they don’t want to see you in that front seat. I mean restaurants are kind of theatre, and to me, you know it’s a contract with the restaurant. If you’re going out to spend a lot of money in a restaurant, their deal with you is that they take your major money and in return they will give you the illusion, if only for a few hours, that you are a privileged person. But if you want that experience, you have to dress the part. And so you know the contract goes a little bit both ways. IDS: And did your experience of playing those different characters influence you when you were writing you new novel Delicious!? RR: Absolutely. I mean when I decided I wanted to write fiction, well actually an editor came to me and said, “You should write fiction” and I said, “well, you know, I’m a memoirist”, I’m not sure I can write fiction. And she said, “oh come on Ruth! What do you think you were doing when you wore all those disguises?” She said, “you weren’t writing fiction but you were living fiction. All you have to do is figure out what character you want to be and instead of being her, put her on the page”. And she said, “who do you want to be?” And I said, “I want to be 21!” [laughs], and so Billy is 21. IDS: You said that your Jewish identity is very important to you. How has that shaped your relationship with food? RR: My mother was the antithesis of a Jewish cook, the sort of stereotype of a Jewish cook is someone who cooks things to death. My mother barely cooked things. I mean, she’s put a turkey in the oven and pull it out ten minutes later and in tell you it was cooked! And I did not grow up with classic Jewish food, and in fact, don’t have much taste for it. I grew up in a very sort of Jewish intellectual household, that maybe because my parents were Jews, they almost deliberately disdained food. They were, like “food isn’t important to us at all. We don’t care”. And so in response to their not caring, I care enormously. I certainly don’t come from any religious background, but my parents were very strongly cultural New York Jews. I realise now because so many of my friends are not Jewish, what a small world, I mean, I grew up in publishing, and my parents’ friends were, pretty much, all Jews. It’s odd to think about because none of them were religious. You know, I went to a public school in Greenwich village, the schools were empty on the Jewish holidays. IDS: The contemporary obsession with food and popular culture in everyday life comes at a time when rates of obesity in the US and Australia are extremely high with 25% of adults in Australia and 35% of adults in the US are obese, and projected to rise further. What role, if any, do you think the food media has to play in educating people, not only about the pleasures of food, but also about health and nutrition? RR: My own bias on this is less with the notion of health and nutrition and more with the notion of get rid of industrial foods. I don’t think that people need to think of food as medicine to be healthy. But I do think that clearly, we have run an experiment on two generations now, where we have allowed our food to be industrialised and constantly refined, become worse and worse and worse. And it’s very clear that, I don’t know if it’s the antibiotics, but you have to think about the antibiotics that are used in the meats in the United States. You know 80% of the antibiotics in the United States are used on perfectly healthy animals, and it’s basically to fatten them up. Well is that fattening us up? The jury is out on that. Is the fact that people think it’s perfectly normal to drink 64 ounces of soft drinks? You know, is the fact that kids get these huge empty calories in soft drinks, that they’re eating cereal that is filled with chemicals, that we allow children to be advertised to, who are sitting ducks. Kids are plonked in front of the television and there are these ads about terrible foods and these ads are being streamed at them constantly. They have no way of filtering them at all. Eating we know is learned behaviour. Japanese children do not grow up liking rice and fish because they have a natural inclination, that’s what they’re fed. Children learn to like what they’re fed and so my real bias on this is that I wish we had less sort of “touchy-feely” media about food and more a hard hitting: this is a political issue, we need the government to step in on this. The food lobby is enormous in the United States and we need to activate people because these things are only going to change when people get up on their two feet and start demanding that the government institute laws about what we are allowed to be fed. What children are allowed to be fed, what children are permitted to watch. I mean we really need to take control of this. IDS: So the industrialised food system is sort of the key? RR: I think so. I don’t think it matters how much fat and eggs and butter you eat if you are eating real food. But I think we, and we in the media, really need to, it is really important for us, to just keep going over this again and again and again and again, and making things transparent. You know we’ve done a very good job in the United States of making “cafos”, confined animal facilities, 10 years ago, nobody knew that animals were being tortured in animal factories, people know that now. If you choose to eat industrialised pigs and that those animals have miserable lives. We really need to keep pushing for transparency in everything. IDS: Do you think the shift towards local food is important as part of that? RR: I think it’s very important. I think that you know for one thing keeping money inside the community is very important. The more we globalise food and, you know, make it cheaper for people to buy food from China than food from the farmer next door, the more we are making our own environments worse places. We need farmers. We need food to be local. The safest way to eat is to know the people who raised your food. You know, one of the big problems we are finding with these huge food epidemics of food-born illnesses is that it’s very hard to trace. You know, what sickened these people? Where do these animals come from? Where did that cantaloupe come from that made people sick? If you are buying, you know, if someone in you family gets sick and you bought food from the farmer next door, it’s very easy to trace. IDS: As you spoke about earlier, there’s 800 million people in the world who don’t have enough food to eat, and it’s not just a problem confined to the developing world, but also one on our doorstep with 5% of households in Australia and 15% in the United States of people experiencing food insecurity. RR: I think it’s more than that. I think it’s one in five children in the United States goes to bed hungry. One in five. IDS: What do you see as ways of addressing this? RR: It’s such a big problem and we all know that it’s largely a problem in the third world. It’s largely a problem of distribution, it’s not that there’s not enough food. In western culture, one of the ways you address it is that people need to learn to cook again. You know, if you know how to cook, it’s easy to live on things like rice and beans, which are very cheap. And if you know how to balance protein. If you think that you need meat at every meal, you create a system of scarcity. So, part of it is teaching people to eat, part of it is, waste is an enormous issue and not just on the macro level but, within households. I mean the amount of food, there are estimates that, you know 50% of food in the states gets essentially wasted. And part of it is, we need to teach people to cook on a household level. People are just throwing things out. One of the things that is really encouraging is that chefs all over the world are starting to address these issues. When I first started reviewing restaurants there were no second harvests, no food pantry people. Now there are people who go and collect food from restaurants for redistribution. But again, I can’t speak to Australia, but the biggest issue in the United States is taxation policy. It’s like we tax the wrong things. So meat is subsidised, sugar is subsidised. If you changed that and you started subsidising healthy food. I mean there’s a reason why when you go to McDonald’s – it is cheap to buy a hamburger and more expensive to buy a salad. And that’s because of our tax policy. So, so much of this needs to be changed at a government level. It’s very hard for individual people to do anything other than lobby the government. Isabelle de Solier does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: mountaineer Andrew Lock
Andrew Lock personifies the meaning of 'grit'. Melbourne Writers' FestivalAndrew Lock is the most accomplished high-altitude mountaineer in Australian history. He is the only Australian, the first person in the Commonwealth, and just the 18th man in the world to climb all 14 of the world’s 8000-metre mountains, including Everest – twice. Here, sports scientist David Bishop talks with Lock about “grit”, the psychological and physical stamina required for 24-hour days of climbing, and how he digs deep enough to achieve such incredible goals. Andrew Lock appeared at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival for Great Journeys: Mountains on Sunday August 24 at 1pm. Read more coverage of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. Listen to other podcast episodes here. Full transcript David Bishop (DB): My name is David Bishop from ISEAL at Victoria University and welcome to this The Conversation podcast. I am speaking with Andrew Lock, the most accomplished high altitude mountaineer in Australian history, who has recently written a memoir about his experience, Summit 8000, and will be appearing at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival later this month. Andrew, welcome. Let me start by asking, which was the greatest challenge, climbing all of the world’s 8000-metre mountains or writing Summit 8000? Andrew Lock (AL): [Laughs] It’s a fair question. I think at the time they both seemed the harder of the two. This is my first book and it took a couple of years and a few false starts. It was certainly a challenge, although a very enjoyable challenge and just as enjoyable as climbing the mountains themselves. DB: Great, because everyone I speak to says it’s one of the most difficult things that they’ve ever done in writing a book. AL: Yeah, I’m not a particularly introspective person, and what I found is that the book forced me to be that. I had kept very comprehensive diaries through all my expeditions. I had really detailed notes to refresh my memory but the perennial question of course is: “Why do you do it?” and “What did you feel?” and I needed to answer that question as best I could in a book. For that I had to dig quite deep and also, I’m actually a very private person so revealing a lot about myself was quite an emotional challenge. But my publisher and my agent kept cracking the whip and I think I managed to do that for them. DB: I’ve just finished reading another book, its called The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler and it talks about how extreme athletes have redefined the limits of the possible. It seems to me that you are superman and your achievements must have seemed impossible not that long ago. How do you think you’ve been able to redefine the limits of possible? AL: Look, I definitely would not consider myself to be a superman, I am very much an average person from an average background. But I do think that it’s the very lucky people in life who discover their innate ability and love doing that. For me that was mountaineering and because I already had an affinity for the outdoors, when I discovered mountaineering, I took to it like a duck to water and absolutely loved it. For me the adventures in the outdoors have always been about taking on challenges where the outcome is uncertain. Because if it’s guaranteed then for me there’s no point in doing it. In order to then achieve those challenges and overcome the obstacles both internal and physical, that forced me every time to draw deeply upon my own motivation and physical stamina. The 8000 metre mountains – every single one of them is an enormous challenge every time. I went on one of these expeditions and I had to dig deeper and deeper each time and when I finished I achieved one particular objective, then I set my sights on a more difficult one so I had to dig deeper each time and I think all of us have that capability it’s just a matter of identifying the process of what’s forcing us to draw upon it. DB: This author, Steven Kotler, discusses how athletes have been able to achieve the impossible by tapping into “flow”. Which is an optimal, almost effortless, psychological state that allows us to be our best. Is this something that you get often when you are climbing or when you are falling? AL: Well actually, that’s very interesting that he said that because I would agree wholeheartedly. I probably don’t feel like I’m flying when I’m falling but the state that I’m trying to achieve when I’m climbing is a physical and mental state where I am pushing really hard, but not to the extent that I’m going to burn out in a short amount of time. Because climbing on these mountains can be 10 hours a day for weeks and weeks and weeks, and a summit a day is invariably at least an 18-hour or 24-hour day of climbing. You’ve got to get into that zone where you keep going despite the pain and the misery and waning motivation. Just find that zone where you just keep on going, and of course as you see the mountains dropping away below you and the distance of the entire planet opens up before you, that’s a great motivator to keep on going. And when I achieve that zone, and it isn’t on every mountain because weather conditions and difficulties can stop it. But when I do achieve that zone I find that I can just go and go and go and I think it’s a bit like long distance running – you just click into that zone. DB: I guess why I mentioned falling is because he describes it as when everything is happening very quickly around you but there’s also this – it’s kind of like the world slows down and you can see all of the options – yeah I need to grab here and I need to grab here, I need to open my legs I need to do this and that and I was just wondering whether you also get to that physiological state when there is maybe a more dangerous instance during your climbing? AL: Well, I am very focused, I certainly find I am extremely focused when I climb and in fact I liken it to almost being meditative because you are so focused and it’s a prolonged state of meditation because you are focused for weeks and weeks. And yes, one becomes hyper-vigilant for all the dangers and the threats that are around you. But you are also very focused on the immediacy of what you are doing so as you say, looking for the right hand hold or the right placement of your ice tool? Or crampon points or whatever and that is a very tunnel-visioned focus, which does last for days and days and weeks throughout the expedition. DB: It’s obvious that it takes great mental strength to do what you’re doing. Is there any specific training that you do in this regard or is just something that you think you have naturally? AL: I do have a natural physiology that allows me to cope with high altitude but of course I have to train. I don’t train psychologically other than the fact that I love having epics so whenever I go for an outdoor adventure it’s always one that tests me as much as I can. But in terms of physical training for the mountains, high altitude, particularly legs and lungs – it’s all about stamina and as I get older I have to train more and more, running and mountain biking and building that stamina. Because that explosive power that we have when we are young isn’t what you need at high altitude it’s just long days for ten or so weeks. DB: And with that training, is that self-directed at the moment or do you consult with a sports scientist for example? AL: No, I’ve never gone down the sports science track, I’m completely self-directed. I’ve joined gyms in the past and not enjoyed them so I do it under my own guidance. But I’m quite a, perhaps not an introvert, but I’m very comfortable with my own space, so I’m happy to train hard by myself and in fact I think I enjoy it more when I’m training by myself. But I like to have adventures with climbing partners. I don’t climb solo all the time but I don’t struggle for motivation to get out into it on my own. DB: And what about, I guess in the climbing world, you know right at the beginning, we were talking about the limits of possible and I guess as we get closer and closer to those limits, is climbing becoming more professional, with other climbers using sports psychologists or nutritionists or sports scientists etc.? AL: It may well be, I haven’t come across that, but it’s certainly becoming more commercialised and more available to less-experienced people through the use of guides and supported Sherpas. It may well be extreme athlete climbers who do seek that sort of professional scientific support, but I’m not actually aware of it. DB: I was surprised that in your book you described yourself as not a supreme athlete, but even though you might not see it, I see a lot of parallels between you and other great athletes. For instance, there’s a controversial theory that you need 10,000 hours or about ten years to become an elite athlete and this seems to match pretty well with your training for your first 8,000 metre ascent and I was wondering if you could maybe just explain just a little bit of your nine years of preparation to climb K2. AL: Yeah, that’s a very good point. When my dream to start mountaineering was born, I had seen a slide show about climbing Mount Everest and I was so inspired by that vision that I decided I’d climb with myself. But you couldn’t be guided in those days, and I’m not the sort of person who would want to be so it really became a matter of project management. So whilst the end goal for me was climbing Mount Everest, I had to break that down into achievable chunks, the first of which was to learn how to rock climb, which I did in Australia and I climbed fanatically in Australia for a year before travelling to New Zealand and transferring those rock skills and rope skills to the alpine environment and I climbed for successive years in New Zealand building my alpine skills then climbing around the world building my altitude skills. And then, finally, taking on 8,000 metres. But in fact my first two 8,000 expeditions, which were to Mount Everest, were unsuccessful and partly because I was drawn into the rescues and assisting other people on the summit pushes but also I think there was probably some poor decisions made which I needed to learn from. So I decided to step back from Everest and then to go and climb a few other 8,000 metre mountains and build some more experience before I came back to Everest, and as you say, the first successful summit was actually K2 about nine years after I first started climbing. And ironically, that is generally considered to be the hardest mountain in the world but I guess I developed sufficient skills to get me up there although it was a desperate, very difficult ascent and a desperate descent. DB: It’s interesting, and I guess this ability to take small persistent steps towards a long-term goal has been described as “grit” and there’s a researcher in America, Angela Lee Duckworth, who thinks it’s one of the most important determinants of elite performance. How important do you think this grit has been in enabling you to achieve your incredible feats to date? AL: It’s been absolutely vital. As I mentioned, the descent from K2 was desperate and in fact two of my climbing partners were killed in that fall. Another climber from another team also died. And whilst I didn’t actually identify it at the time, I think I was affected by those deaths and my motivation waned a little bit for just for a couple of years, and I still kept climbing but I then didn’t succeed on the mountains I went to. And I made a conscious decision that I would either start succeeding or take up a different activity and with that conscious decision that I would simply not give up when I was tired, sick, exhausted, scared, or whatever, I would force myself through those stages and only allow myself to turn around when it was, you know, simply too difficult for me or the risk was no longer acceptable. That developed in me a new psychological approach of simply – grit is a great word for it – that I would keep going no matter what until either of those two things stopped me, the risk was too great or it was beyond my ability. And, with that newfound psychology, if you like, I started to succeed very regularly in the mountains. That didn’t make the mountain climbing any easier, I still had plenty of epics and a few close survival experiences, but I found myself time and again in situations where I was really very, very tired and just wanted to get down, and get back to warmth after being on the mountain for weeks or in blizzards or trapped to very difficult climbing conditions. But I just would not let myself give up and I think grit is probably the right word. DB: How do you think you have been able to push yourself to the very limit, but also quite accurately assess the risks, so how do you think you’ve been able to do that maybe a little bit better than some of the other climbers? AL: To be honest I was lucky in the first instance to be able to survive the accidents, of course of deaths of those three climbers, but I learnt from it and I very quickly became a good risk manager. Now, I continued to be lucky, there were incidents that occurred where others were killed and I could have been and I was just purely lucky, but I certainly chose to take a very risk-management focus to all of my climbs so it’s always about calculated risk. And there were plenty of times when I deemed it too dangerous to go on and that I needed to turn around or just on a particular day the conditions were too cold and I needed to turn around, but just come back the following day just to fight off frost bite on that particular day, and so that drew the process of climbing those mountains out for a number of years. One particular mountain took me five attempts because on several of those attempts the conditions were too dangerous and it was my own risk assessment that caused me to turn around and go back down and come back another year. It was always a great disappointment because it delayed my objectives and cost a lot of money and affected all of the other aspects of my life, but that was very, very important to me because at the end of the day they are just lumps of rock and ice. DB: So that comes back to the “grit” I guess and the key to keep pushing on with that long-term goal in mind. AL: Yes that’s right. The long-term goal of climbing all the peaks evolved from when I eventually summited Mount Everest in 2000, that was my seventh successful 8,000 metre summit and as I mentioned before, I like challenges where the outcome is uncertain, and the end of one challenge is always the starting point for the next. So having climbed Mount Everest, I licked four of the next big challenges and at the time only half a dozen of the world’s elite climbers had climbed all 14 of the 8,000 metre peaks so that seemed an appropriate challenge. I didn’t really think that I would be able to achieve it because all of those other climbers were in a completely different dimension as far as mountaineering elitism goes. But therefore it made it a worthwhile challenge and a project to focus on and to push towards no matter how many years it took. DB: And the way you described it, I guess climbing often seems like a solitary pursuit, but I was interested to read that you like climbing in teams so I’m just wondering if you can tell me a little bit about the team sport aspect of climbing a mountain? AL: Oh look I think adversity shared is – makes the achievement – far more enjoyable. I don’t like climbing in big teams, I don’t tend to enjoy the dynamics of big teams, but small teams of like-minded individuals – two or three – to me that’s an ideal size where you can work together. The leadership in those sort of circumstances is generally shared and if you’re climbing with people of similar experience and philosophy as to the approach to the climb then it can be a very enjoyable experience and I found that relationship with two or three other climbers over the years, where we almost didn’t need to speak when it came to a particular challenge, a cliff that we had to climb or a crevasse we had to cross or whatever, we just knew what we had to do and we did it to the satisfaction of the other members of the group. But you know, it is psychologically very supportive to have team members to share the fears and the adversity with when times are really tough. And so of course we share the elation of success at the end of those expeditions. I have climbed solo on some of them and that’s a completely different challenge. That’s more of a psychological challenge and whilst there’s a great sense of satisfaction, at the end of it you don’t have anyone to share it with, it is not as much fun. DB: One of the hot topics of sport is talent identification. If we were to try and find the next great Australian climber, what sort of characteristics do you think we should look for? AL: Hm, gosh that’s a good question. I’d be looking for people who are under the radar, are out climbing interesting, technically challenging peaks in ranges of little expeditions and exploration and who are doing it off their own bat without sponsorship because they tend to be the ones who have that grit to take on the really big challenges without the need for kudos or a camera in their face. There are Australian climbers out there doing great things in remote and barely-known mountain ranges so Australia already has great climbers out there doing things. I just happened to get a bit of publicity because of the particular peaks I was climbing, but those high-achieving Australian climbers are already in action. DB: Well thanks for your time today Andrew, good luck with the book and also your appearance at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival later in the month. AL: Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Thanks for that. David Bishop does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: The New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum
American comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black. FoxtelOver the past decade we have witnessed the rise and rise of long form television – from The Sopranos to The Wire, Game of Thrones to Orange Is the New Black – and no one has been watching this transformation more keenly than the television critic for The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum. Here, media researcher Lisa French talks with Nussbaum about bingeing on DVD sets, live-tweeting and delighting in reruns of Sex and The City. Nussbaum appeared at the 2014 Melbourne Writers’ Festival on Friday August 22 for Seminar: Writing About TV and Castaway with Emily Nussbaum, Talking Points: How TV Got Great on Saturday August 23 and then at the Sydney Opera House Festival of Dangerous Ideas for Television Has Replaced the Novel on Sunday August 31. Read more coverage of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. Listen to other podcast episodes here. Full transcript: Lisa French (LF): My name is Lisa French and welcome to The Conversation podcast. I am speaking with Emily Nussbaum, TV critic for The New Yorker, who is in Australia this month for the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. Emily, welcome. Let me start by asking how you became a television critic? Emily Nussbaum (EM): Well, honestly the reason I got into television in the first place, I always chalk up straightforwardly to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because around 1999 I was watching Buffy, and this was a time that TV was exploding a bit. The Sopranos was out and Sex and The City and a lot of other shows, and I’ve always been interested in TV, but Buffy was the first show where I was just transformed by becoming a super-fan in a slightly insane way. One of the things that was going on was a lot of people were talking about The Sopranos, and I loved The Sopranos, but I also loved Buffy. I would go to parties and I would want to talk to people about Buffy and what a brilliant show it was, how operatic it was, how it had this fantastic mixture of genres and these incredible performances – and it was a very easily put-down show. It was a show about a teenage girl who was a vampire slayer, it was on this tiny cable network that nobody had really heard of (that was for teenagers) and honestly it kind of lit this flame in me and put a chip on my shoulder. I’m an argumentative person and it made me interested in the larger debate about what TV was capable of. Also, it just felt like an exciting period. So, I feel very lucky to be writing about TV during a time of great transformation. That was also a period when people were starting to talk about TV online, and the other origins of me ending up writing about TV were honestly things like television without pity, and anonymous websites where people would passionately discuss television. I read a lot of critics, but my inspirations as far as a critic [goes] were often online digital conversation about TV, which I found wildly stimulating and also global; in a way to talk with an audience of television viewers that otherwise I wouldn’t have had access to. Since TV was always considered a very isolated experience, I think it really changed the way that people thought about it. You could actually treat it as a text, and it was as though the world was a graduate school in which everyone was just constantly persevering about particular shows that they loved or hated. As for becoming a television writer, that’s a different situation. I feel like I have a dream job. I’m very, very lucky to be writing for The New Yorker, which is a place where I can write seriously about television and I can write at a pace where I can write longer essays. It’s thrilling and I feel like I’m constantly trying to push myself forward with this. As anyone knows journalism is collapsing [laughs] and it’s very difficult to write arts criticism, so I never know what advice to give people who want to write about TV. I have to hope that there will be models for doing it, but there’s no way that I could give any kind of meaningful advice given that I feel like I came of age during a period of transformation not only for TV but for journalism. And, a lot of people I know are writing at very fast paces online and writing recaps and things like that. I think that can be very brutal, I mean, ideally I hope we’re working toward a stage where people actually will get compensated for writing thoughtfully about TV, and essentially every year I’m just hoping that the bottom doesn’t drop out on the possibility of doing that. LF: You just touched on something that I wanted to ask you about, which is: how technology has changed your work, how it’s changed whether a television critic might have a social media strategy, how to keep up with your field and [if] technology has changed everything that you do? EN: Well, for one thing, I feel like the changes in technology are indistinguishable from the changes in TV itself. You wouldn’t have a show like The Wire unless you had two things that supported it. One of them is DVDs and DVRs that enabled people to pause, rewind, save, revisit and basically treat television shows as texts that they could analyse. And, the other thing is the internet, which allows people to decode more dense kinds of art. Previously, television was just something that poured into people’s living rooms. They saw it once and then they just had to react to it as it happened – they couldn’t treat it the way that you would a song, a movie, a book or a variety of other art forms. I think that changed it a lot. But, as for my own experience with it, as I said I was a very online kind of television viewer and I still am, and you know every year the whole thing changes in terms of how people talk about TV. Twitter was invented a few years ago and I’m very active on Twitter, and for me, everybody uses these things different ways. I don’t think of it as a strategy, I think of it more as writing is isolating, and there’s something wonderful about the social world of being able to trade ideas back and forth with other people. With TV specifically, I feel like it’s such an audience-driven art form, not to say that the shows don’t exist separate from the audience, but unlike a lot of other art forms, and this is sort of [an] ongoing thing with me is the question of: how do you distinguish the critical conversation about television from these anxious historical comparisons where they say “it’s become as good as movies! It’s as good as books!” To me, I feel like people need to drop those comparisons and celebrate TV on its own terms. One of the things that happens with TV is it takes place over time, episodically, and in a kind of loop with the audience, and because of the way TV is made, often it reacts to the audience’s reactions to it. So, this is a long way of saying I feel like for me, when I’m talking about a television show, I’m often writing about it part way through the series. It hasn’t necessarily ended, and being able to hear other people’s responses to the show is very valuable to me – because it does make me feel like I’m part of a live audience reacting to things, and being able to talk to people globally who have different reactions. It often makes me question my own responses and think about different perspectives on TV. For me it’s great, but on the other hand, everybody has a different personality about this kind of thing, and I know a lot of people find online TV conversation overwhelming and it kind of drowns out their own responses. So, I think you can see it [in] all sorts of different ways. LF: One of the things I’ve noticed is, the television’s gained this whole new life that seems to be connected to, so I’m thinking True Detective, you know the kind of actors that are going and the kind of directors. Do you have any view on what might be causing that? EN: For one thing, I’m not going to make major judgements on what’s going on in Hollywood, but universally, people seem to find that it is more difficult to make idiosyncratic, independent films in Hollywood. I mean there’s opportunity that’s clearly available, especially on cable television, that there isn’t necessarily in Hollywood as far as funding something [goes]. So, there’s been this inflow that’s very exciting to me and challenging to me also, especially movie directors. As far as the big name stars that are going on TV [go], I think that’s been happening for a while, because it used to be an area where it was a condescended kind of acting and that had to do with the kinds of shows that were on television. It was something that potentially could destroy somebody’s career because they had stepped down and they had gone from, you know, Hollywood and movies to TV. I just think that distinction doesn’t hold anymore. But, as exciting as it is to me to see big name directors and big name actors go to television shows, to me it’s important to distinguish between the excitement of status names and the excitement of great, breakthrough and actually original work. I’m not a huge fan of True Detective, I wrote a critical piece about it – I mean, I think it was a visually exciting and chaotic show, and it does stick with you, but I thought the praise for it was overblown. And, I think part of the reason it happened was because it fit in to all of these categories that people just tend to throw praise at, which are the kind of antihero dramas, big name actors and things like that. However, I do think that when Jane Campion made Top of The Lake that was a lot more exciting to me. Because, I felt like what she was doing with the format of the experimental procedural by making [it] into something far more visually ambitious, strange, quiet, eerie and poetic than a lot of TV murder mysteries are – to me that was a much more exciting thing that was happening. So, essentially, I’m just cautious about having a hierarchy in which things that come from Hollywood are better than things that are native to TV. And, similarly, you know this goes with sort of a larger feeling that I have where I really get excited when the conversation expands so that its not all about dark and gritty dramas, but it’s about sitcoms, it’s about all different kinds of TV and how TV is changing. I mean in a lot of ways I’m more interested in comedy than drama. But, it’s harder to talk about why a comedy is great. LF: If you think about Top of The Lake and Buffy, one of the things I’m wondering about is there seems to be, certainly in Australia, a lot more shows about women with women-centred characters, way more than there actually [are] I think in Hollywood, and what we’ve noticed in Australia is there are a lot more women creators and they’re creating a lot more interesting roles for women. Do you think there’s more going on in relation to good roles for women? EN: Yeah, I think it’s incredibly exciting and it’s not just exciting for, you know, identity politics numbers reasons. It’s exciting because I feel like on TV especially, first of all, there’s such a wide range of creators and good roles that I feel like we’ve finally moved past the point where people are excited about one of them, and then that show or that person has to represent all women. That to me is a terrible situation, where you have one person that are like “look, it’s so-and-so, they’re representing how women can be funny!” I mean it’s just ridiculous because there’s a million different stories to tell. But, I have to say, the last couple of years have been really explosive in terms of great female characters and great female creators, and in terms of female comedy especially – there’s a wide range of interesting voices on TV. I think the main thing that’s been really exciting, and this is true for men as well, has been [that] historically there was this problem where all television characters had to be likeable. You had to invite them into your living room every week and, because TV was a mass medium that was very driven by advertising on network television, there was a demand that characters not have off-putting qualities. That’s changed a lot for both men and women, and for men a little bit earlier, because the change with the great antihero characters like Tony Soprano really broke open that rule. And so, suddenly, you could have characters who acted badly, or made the audience uncomfortable. I feel like there was a second wave of characters that did that for women, and the main thing about it is that it’s completely expanded the rhetoric of what an exciting central female character can be. Not every character has to be inspiring and somebody who represents women and somebody everyone can identify with. A lot of the shows that did that earlier were really terrific, like Mary Tyler Moore, but it’s a neutralising kind of thing for a woman to always have to be basically a credit to her gender on television. And also, the other thing that’s exciting to me are shows that have ensembles of women where it’s not just one or two women on the show, but you have a whole range, and you get shows like: Orange is the New Black, Call the Midwife and, I was going to say Orphan Black, but that’s actually one woman, eight times [laughs] so it’s slightly different. Again, I just think it’s a great moment, because you don’t get that Smurfette problem where you have one woman in a larger ensemble and she’s like “the girl” character. That is a problem in big, mass Hollywood movies and it doesn’t seem to me to be a problem on TV at all. That’s not to say I love every show, but there’s so many different shows on TV that sometimes it’s hard to point out larger trends. But, I do think there is an exciting improvement in terms of having characters who range from Alicia Florrick on The Good Wife to Amy Jellicoe on Enlightened that are just indelible, memorable, complex characters and great performances. LF: I wanted to ask you about bingeing, I know you’re going to talk a bit about it and you just mentioned the idea of television coming into your room, you know, into your house once a week or whatever, and I read one of your columns where you talk about trying to resist the urge to binge The Returned, which I wasn’t able to resist that urge and had to binge the whole lot and I’ve actually found that my entire relationship to television has changed since I became a binger and I just – it’s like I come rushing home and I have to get my fix. So, I wonder what you think about that kind of phenomena that you know you can buy the whole series, or you know, like you don’t actually have to resist, like is it changing how you know because instead of thinking about it all week you actually have to you get onto the next you don’t know how you can stop it not where the cliffhanger is you can just go in for as much time as you have and so I wonder whether that changes the sort of passionate engagement in how you might like something and then you might after a while change your mind? EN: Yeah I think that it’s true, it’s a particularly wonderful thing for shows like, I was talking about Orange is the New Black and a friend of mine pointed out to me that she thought that if Orange is the New Black was something that people watched episodically it might not have caught on the way that it did because it was different enough in terms of its environment and its tone that it’s the kind of thing that if it was weekly people might’ve watched two episodes and been like “yeah, you know I’m not sure it’s for me” whereas when you were able to watch the whole thing in my review I said something about scarfing down the episodes like they were Thin Mints, like they were girl scout cookies, where you just eat the whole thing. There really is a delicious quality to certain shows and especially, you know, melodrama plots or things that are just very immersive, it’s thrilling to be able to watch them at once. I have mixed feeling about it because, you know, it does take away from the historical thing of people watching shows over long periods of time when everybody’s watching a show at a different point it’s actually hard to critically respond to it. It’s been a tricky thing for me to figure out, you know, should I talk about the whole season of a show? Should I talk about three quarters of the way through? I got onto Breaking Bad really late in the game, so I actually watched the first three seasons of that show all in one week by myself, which was a wonderful week, it was really great to be able to watch the show that way. And, you know, it was odd because I felt like I was suddenly watching it in a very different way than many people that I knew had watched it, like they’d watched it over years debating the characters, and I was watching it very independently in this kind of giddy wave-state of just ignoring everybody and watching all day long. It’s interesting to me that there are these new things like Netflix and Amazon, where whole seasons are being produced all at once. I mean, I think it depends on the show whether that’s going to be a good thing or a bad thing. It definitely frees the television creator from having to shift gears halfway through when they realise that the audience is reacting to something. That’s good probably in some cases and not in others. But, it does make me excited that there’s a show, Jill Soloway’s show, Transparent is going to be coming out in September. I really realised with this jolt that the entire season was coming out at once and so I was just looking forward to it in a very different way than realising the show was going to debut in late September because I sort of realised I’m just assigning a day to watch the whole thing. LF: In Australia, we don’t get things when you get them and we have to wait a long time. So, often we, like when I watch Breaking Bad I can buy the whole lot in the shop and then I could go and get the next series so I could binge them, and that’s one of the reasons why Australians are actually the greatest pirates in the world because they can’t get what they want, when they want, and they can’t get their fix. And so, that’s something that’s playing out in the media right now. I wonder whether this changes the kind of fan bases for television? You know, when I went to see the movie of Sex and The City I was a big fan of the show, mainly for the frocks actually and the first part, and I love New York, so I couldn’t get over the hundreds of women all drinking Cosmopolitans and, you know, there’d be a single shot of a shoe stepping out of the car – you know, the Manolo Blahnik shot – and the whole audience would go [gasps] like this, and you know that thing of you watch it then you kind of go into work and then you might or to school or wherever and you might talk to someone about it you know, you might go to your old book club and you might all be talking about it. So, do you think the kind of nature of fandom has changed because of this technology and online and in different ways? EN: In some ways yes and in some ways no. I mean, one of the nice things that I think about online conversation is that they happen both immediately and over time so I if you’re in a discussion thread about a show you can write something and then somebody can come back a week later and write a response to you and you end up having ongoing conversations so its not a live audience all watching it at once, but the conversation itself still can be very, you know, immersive, I mean, people have been talking about this with the Netflix shows because the question becomes: “When can I start talking about it and spoiling things, like has everyone caught up?” On the other hand, there are still some shows in the states that people do still watch live together, one of them is Scandal, which everybody tweets about simultaneously and I have really mixed feelings about live tweeting television shows, I mean TV is not only a dialogue experience, it’s a visual experience, and there’s part of me that feels like it’s disrespectful to be constantly looking down at your phone or tweeting and talking to people during the thing. On the other hand, a show like Scandal really just begs for that response. It’s a very high octane crazy melodrama and a lot of the fun is responding simultaneously with people as it goes on so, you know, it’s a developing etiquette as far as these things go but my main thing is I just think there are so many ways of being an audience for TV solo or joined together or watching live and in a group together that there’s a level where I don’t think that the intense fanhood has gone away. I can’t judge exactly how the viewing operates in Australia because I understand from what people are saying that there’s a lot of online pirating but I assume that people still watch it together sometimes for shows like Game of Thrones that have big fanhoods. I’m excited though that there’s more of an opportunity for shows that have small audiences because I think some of the most interesting and striking things happen on shows that will never be like huge fan-engaged, crazy sensations that are the must talk about things. A show like Enlightened, which was a small show and got cancelled after two seasons, but was, to me, one of the best things that’s been on TV in a long time. The great thing to me is that people can still come to it years later. The Wire also had a relatively small audience until a few seasons in and I’m just grateful that people can become enthusiasts years after the show was actually on the air by watching it on DVD, and then it just becomes part of the cultural knowledge of television. What I worry about actually is great shows being lost just because they’re not available to people, and honestly, one of them is Sex and The City because the horrible truncated re-runs are shown at least here, there’s these ones that were shown on mainstream TV and so they cut out almost all of the graphic sex and language and it just changes the show into a much blander romantic comedy and I feel like most people don’t have access to the original episodes. And I have this very frustrated feeling like the younger generation is not growing up with the full knowledge of Sex and the City, the kind of thing that only I am upset about, but I am upset enough for everybody else about this. I feel that there should be public funding for the entire episodes of Sex and the City to be shown so that everybody can discuss them with me 20 years later. Lisa French does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Speaking with: Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield
Chris Hadfield spent nearly five months on the International Space Station. NASA, CC BY-NDColonel Chris Hadfield is one of the most famous astronauts on Earth. Through the creative use of social media, he’s made space exciting and accessible to new generations of enthusiasts, most notably through his performance of David Bowie’s Space Oddity while on board the International Space Station. In this interview, I ask Chris about human-machine relations, lessons for the Australian space program and his favourite bit of space junk. Chris Hadfield is a guest at the Melbourne Writers Festival. Details here. Read more coverage of the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. Listen to other podcast episodes here. Alice Gorman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.