Stories from inside life’s big top.

Posts from the “podcast” Category

Radical Acts of Remembrance

Posted on January 3, 2020

A fantastic thing has come out of making From A Whisper To A Bang!   A slew of people have taken to visiting the grave of my great-uncle, Richard “Charles” Spencer, Private, 5218, AIF, (1899-1918). Generous strangers all, asking for nothing in return.   Something I never considered when I began making this podcast series about remembrance, three years ago with the welcome of 2020.   Richard’s final resting place is in the small CWGC cemetery of Spoilbank, a few kilometres south of Ypres in Belgium. I tell his story in Episode 03: ‘City As War Memorial’. Thousands of people in Australia and all over the world have listened to it.   Sad and astonishing as it is, it is a gateway into something…

Categories: From A Whisper To A Bang, Personal Essay, Photo Essay, photography, podcast, Remembrance, tribute, War

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From A Whisper To A Bang! – The Podcast, The Marathon

Posted on September 3, 2019

You might have noticed, it’s been a bit quiet around here lately. Well, for the last 6 months or so anyway.   Something really BIG has taken up my time. For the best part of two years really… The biggest creative project of my life.   I’ve been working with sound since the late 1980s, and working in radio most of my life – from the early days at 3RRR, to triple j, then on ABC Local Radio and Radio National too.   Radio’s always been my “first love”. When I relocate to Berlin in 2015 as a freelance media maker (and as a newly-minted meditation teacher!) I add “podcast maker” to my suite of skills. It seems a “no brainer”. Helping set up…

Categories: berlin, Documentary, podcast, radio, Remembrance, War

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On Nodding Terms

Posted on February 4, 2018
High-res version

In February 2018 Auspicious Plastic was selected as a finalist in the Frankie “Good Stuff” Awards in the ‘Writing + Podcasts’ category.

 

 

I submitted an excerpt from “Episode 10“, featuring a conversation with dedicated diarist and digital publisher, Carrie King. It went into the running for the ‘Writing + Podcast’ category, and the People’s Choice Award.

 

 

Bobbing around out there on that roiling sea of podcasts, sometimes it can feel as if you’re in the boat alone, rendered invisible by thick fog and heavy swells. So it’s very nice to receive some acknowledgement. And an oar back to shore…

 

I was chuffed (and genuinely surprised!) to be selected as one of six finalists in the category. And grateful to everyone I’ve interviewed for the series so far, Cooperblack for the theme music and Studio Ink for the lovely logo design. And to my late Mum Margaret who inspired it all.

 

Thank you to everyone who has listened to the series, been touched it, and who voted for it in the ‘People’s Choice Award’.

 

POST UPDATED: ‘Auspicious Plastic’ didn’t win the category, but it was great to be selected along with five other auspicious finalists. Read more – and about the winner (congrats Taku Mbudzi!) – on the Frankie website.

TAKING A LITTLE BREAK: ‘Auspicious Plastic’ will return in 2019. In the meantime there are 14 episodes to catch up on or to re-listen to – on Soundcloud, and/or listen+subscribe on iTunes.

 

Categories: craft, grief, interview, People, podcast

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An Auspicious Milestone…

Posted on January 13, 2018

Ten episodes, 11 guests, 12 months and a brand New Year…   As 2018 begins, I’d like to acknowledge all of the kind and wonderful people who have shared their precious objects and personal stories with me on the Auspicious Plastic podcast over the last 12 months.   For me it doesn’t get better than listening to conversations that come straight from the heart.   So on the launch of the 10th episode, I’d like to take this opportunity to gratefully thank the Auspicious Plastic “family”… THANK YOU: Delma and Katherine Calcagno, AU (Episode 01) Anna Brownfield, AU (Episode 02) Michael Pieracci, US (Episode 03) Robyn Overell, AU (Episode 04) Amy Brand, AU (Episode 05) Sarah Pepin, LUX (Episode 06) Danny Walsh, AU (Episode 07)…

Categories: podcast

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Satellite Of Love: Massimo Maio

Posted on December 9, 2017

Massimo Maio moved to Berlin “for love”.   Migrating from a “small and cosy” village in southwest Germany, he says that “friends, radio and art” also had a lot to do with him pulling up stumps for the German capital.   Like me, Massimo has BIG LOVE for radio. It’s a fundamental part of his life and has been since he was a child. He’s also been working in the medium for many years, both as a producer and presenter, starting in the days of analogue, later embracing digital with its creative freedoms and disruptive potential.   Snap! We’re also died-in-the-wool public broadcasters.   Massimo and I first met in 2015 just after I moved to Berlin from Australia. I was co-teaching a two-day…

Categories: interview, People, podcast, radio

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A Podcast about Precious Objects

Posted on May 15, 2017

“Objects should not ‘touch’ [us] because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them: they are useful, nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts.” – Jean-Paul Sartre Auspicious Plastic is a monthly podcast about ‘things’ that bring meaning to our lives, and even make us happy.   When using my Mum’s old Tupperware containers as “grief therapy” after she passed away, I discovered how such simple ‘pieces of plastic’ could hold so much meaning – and emotion. And how these objects touched me so profoundly, as if animated by something deeply mystical…   I wondered how my use of…

Categories: craft, culture, interview, People, photography, podcast, Uncategorized

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Notes from a Wicked Woman

Posted on June 29, 2016

Radio has been my first love FOREVER.   I made my very first program in the mid-1980s. It was the time of gargantuan shoulder pads, John Hughes movies and elbow dancing. Thankfully by then I’d discovered ska music, black Levis and brothel creepers.   In my second year of university, one lunch time I stumbled upon an “extra curricular” workshop paid for by my Student Union fees. The good folk at the Union had kindly put it on for misfits like me, desperate for distraction from what I was finding to be less-than-fulfilling paramedical “yoonee” studies. Radio production and reel-to-reel tape decks it was!   Run by a guy called “Paul” (veteran radio trainer Paul Vadasz as I later found out), he was recruiting…

Categories: Personal Essay, podcast, radio

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