Not What You Think with Zacha Rosen
30 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 6 years ago -Prison, comics, pirates, dating, edible computers and caecilians. From Sydney's FBi Radio, we talk about the quiet ideas you haven't heard of. Yet.
Subscribe on iTunes or elsewhere.
[405192]
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
505: Quinceañeras (Gabriela Coronado) — SUPPORTER DRIVE SPECIAL
September 25, 2018 14:00 - 24 minutes - 24 BytesIn Mexico and across Latin America, and Australia, a quinceañera is a celebration of turning fifteen. It’s usually a party, usually for a girl and you might have seen a version of one in Jane the Virgin, One Day at a Time, or even Sweet 15: Quinceañera. But there’s much more to this tradition than just pastel dresses and high heels. Though there are those, too. Doctor Gabriela Coronado is a Mexican-Australian anthropologist whose areas include the intercultural complexities of cultures. She...
504: Dinner Table Racism (Nur Alam and Yvonne Perczuk)
February 09, 2018 10:00 - 21 minutes - 21 BytesPeople say some stupid stuff when they think they're among friends. "All Jews" are this, maybe. Or "all Muslims" are that. Do you confront casual racism when you hear it, in private places like the dinner table, from family or friends? Or do you bite your tongue? Two Sydney women weren't sure that straight up confrontation would work all by itself, so they helped write a play that worked it. Nur Alam and Yvonne Perczuk are part of the writing collective Abe's Babes, which wrote the play The...
503: Making a Fashion Festival in Western Sydney (Thuy Ngyuen)
February 02, 2018 09:00 - 17 minutes - 17 BytesJust because you don’t see people like yourself up on stage in international fashion shows doesn’t mean you don’t want good fashion of your own. There are great designers making clothes that include Fijian design, hijabs or Vietnamese fabric. And all of those just in Sydney’s western suburbs. Filmmaker Thuy Ngyuen made the documentary Against the Grain about the Western Sydney Fashion Festival. She also helped make the Festival happen in the first place. Links from this episode: Keep up t...
502: Ordinary Drones (Peter Robinson)
January 26, 2018 08:14 - 22 minutes - 22 BytesThere are exciting drones and there are definitely scary drones. But drones have quieter things going on as well. They’re already at work doing ordinary stuff: working in agriculture, in infrastructure, filming the news. Peter Robinson is a journalist at the ABC, and has been working on pioneering some of those moves for the organisation. Links from this episode: CASA’s Can I Fly There? app. Four Corners’ water theft story, with its drone-shot footage. The drone battery fire on board a pl...
501: Peace Journalism (Zainab Abdul-Nabi)
January 19, 2018 07:35 - 20 minutes - 20 BytesWar in the news is kind of hard to watch. Conflict gets presented like sports — two sides: one wins, one loses. Advocates of peace journalism think that war can be covered better than this. And, by reporting more to us than just a zero-sum game, it can offer ways of dealing with conflict that aren’t just about violence and who’s committing it. Zainab Abdul-Nabi is a former journalist who’s especially interested in using peace journalism to look at Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Bahrain pro-de...
408: Midwives, Doctors and Rabbits (Amelia Dale)
October 27, 2016 16:00 - 18 minutes - 18 BytesAlmost three hundred years ago, a woman called Mary Toft was interrogated a bunch of doctors in London. She was interrogated after having given birth to a litter of rabbits. Or so she claimed. But, in that era, one of the strangest things about the case wasn’t just the rabbits: it was that doctors — “male midwives” — were muscling into the giving birth business. Amelia Dale teaches at Sydney University and talked about Toft in her PhD thesis. Links from this episode: Learn more about Mar...
407: The Milky Way is Disappearing (Angel Lopez-Sanchez)
October 21, 2016 08:00 - 17 minutes - 17 BytesThere’s this thing that’s disappearing in cities across the world: the entire Milky Way. Light pollution means that more and more people can’t see our own galaxy in the sky. A view which used to be a fundamental human experience. Angel Lopez-Sanchez is an astronomer at the the Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO) and Macquarie University who knows what we’re missing and what we can do about it. Links from this episode: Angel’s blog, the Lined Wolf and his post on light pollution. Fi...
406: Telling One Frog From Another (Jodi Rowley)
October 14, 2016 05:00 - 22 minutes - 22 BytesIt's not just that there are a lot of different kinds of amphibians. There are a lot of different kinds of frogs. Some fight, some bark, some sing. we have a lot to learn from this (often) threated variety of amphibians. Not just about how frogs work, but also for human benefit as well. Jodi Rowley curator of amphibian and reptile conservation biology for the Australian Museum and the University of New South Wales. She knows frogs. Links from this episode: Jodi has SO MANY FROGS on her we...
405: How to Close All of Italy's Asylums if You're a Basaglia (John Foot)
October 06, 2016 23:00 - 21 minutes - 21 BytesIn 1978, Italy passed a law to shut down its Asylums. The asylums were ageing, horrfying institutions that weren’t so great at looking after people. Two people at the centre of the change were Franco Basaglia and his wife, Franca Ongaro Basaglia. Historian John Foot accidentally discovered this story at a documentary screening, and wrote a book on them. He explains why what they did is such a big thing. Links from this episode: John’s book is available in all the places. The documentary...
404: Reading What Spies Write About You (Lars Rutz)
September 29, 2016 08:00 - 29 minutes - 29 BytesLars Rutz grew up in the East Berlin bohemian scene in communist Germany in the 80s. Like a lot of people in the East, he wanted to leave. But East Germany was a police state, with an ever-present spy agency, the Stasi. What is it like to try to escape a place like that? And what is it like to read what the spies wrote about you, years later? Links from this episode: The Stasi really did have a library of smells. Snowden really did have a statue in Berlin, along with Chelsea Manning and ...
403: Grandmas (Kristen Hawkes)
September 23, 2016 00:00 - 21 minutes - 21 BytesWhy is menopause a thing? Only three species really do it: short-finned pilot whales, killer whales and humans beings. It’s biologically strange. And it gives us another biologically strange thing: grandmas. Dr Kristen Hawkes (University of Utah) is the lead proponent of the Grandmother Hypothesis, which says that grandmas became a thing in human evolution because having them was a pretty good deal, evolutionarily speaking. Links from this episode: Listen to Kristen’s full lecture at t...
402: The Ex. Ex. (Will Scates Frances)
September 16, 2016 00:00 - 19 minutesNowadays the Ex. Ex. is less famous that The XX. But in the early nineteenth century, it was one of the most ambitious journeys in history. The US Exploring Expedition (the Ex. Ex.), traveled the Pacific on a mission of non-violent exploration. But it was an ideal it didn't always exactly live up to. Will Scates Frances is writing a PhD about the expedition and the perspectives of its crew. He knows the Ex. Ex. Links from this episode: Read a whole lot more about the Ex. Ex. at the Smiths...
401: The Unreliability of Witness Testimony (Celine Van Golde)
September 09, 2016 06:00 - 18 minutesIf you’re a fan of Serial, Law & Order, Making a Murderer, you’ve probably spent a bit of time watching TV police making people confess to their criminal acts and listening to witnesses place someone at the scene of the crime. But for the legal system, memory and confessions aren’t always as reliable as you think they are. Dr Celine Van Golde is the director of the Sydney Exoneration Project, which examines old convictions to look for wrongful imprisonment. Links from this episode: Read m...
306: Molluscs (Ross Coleman)
April 07, 2016 13:35 - 23 minutesThey're pretty much all guts, foot, teeth and maybe a bit of shell. Snails, limpets, octopuses or giant squid: they're all a kind of mollusc. You'll find one in almost every ecosystem in the world. Sydney University's Professor Ross Coleman specialises in limpets and knows all his molluscs pretty well. He takes us from the Liverpool docks, to Blackwattle Bay, to the weirdest of mollusc sex. Links from this episode: The lowdown on molluscs of all kinds. Ross has written all sorts of p...
305: LGBTIQ Domestic Violence (Moo Baulch)
April 07, 2016 13:33 - 23 minutesThis episode talks about domestic violence in the LGBTIQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bixexual, Trans, Intersex, Queer) community. It's probably not appropriate for children and could be a trigger for some listeners. If you or someone you know is affected by domestic violence you can talk to someone on 1 800 RESPECT. In an emergency, call the police on 000. Lots more options further down these show notes. Over the course of the last year Australia seems to have paid more attention to the issue of domest...
304: Making Newpapers for Children (Saffron Howden)
March 11, 2016 09:08 - 19 minutesWhile a lot of newspapers in the grownup world are struggling to get by, one kind of newspaper is doing kind of ok thank you. In France, Germany and the UK children's newspapers are going strong, mailed out to a waiting audience of school-age children. Saffron Howden is launching "Crinkling" April, a kids' newspaper in Australia and she's ready to tell us all about the workings of these junior newspapers. Links from this episode: Crinkling launches in April. Have a look at the...
303: Making it Big and Making it Small in Comics (Matt Huynh)
February 26, 2016 12:08 - 21 minutesIt seems a bit like comic books are everywhere these days: dominating our screens from Iron Man to Jessica Jones. But this isn't the first time that there's been a comic book boom. And it's not always as easy to ride that wave, as an artist, as it might seem. Comic artist Matt Huynh has had a lot of success at this comic-making thing. First in Australia, now in New York. We're also joined by Marcelo Baez, who witnessed the 90s comics craziness first hand. Links from this episode: So much ...
302: Motoboys and Motogirls (Antoni Abad)
February 19, 2016 00:09 - 19 minutesSão Paolo has a traffic problem. But while the cars stand still, motoboys (and motogirls) ride up the "corridor of death" between gridlock. Over two hundred thousand of them. It's an incredibly dangerous job. Spanish artist, Antoni Abad gave the motoboys a voice atmegafone.net in the early days of the mobile internet and will tell you all about them, from the favela to the app economy. He knows his motoboys. Links from this episode: The motoboy section of Megafone.net is still running, t...
301: Growing Older as a Lesbian (Teresa Savage)
February 12, 2016 10:30 - 19 minutesHave you ever thought about what the world is like as you get older? It can be hard. Even harder if you're a woman. And harder still if you're gay. Or transgender. If you don't fit in. Teresa Savage has spent her life not fitting in. And being awesome for it. She runs the website 55 Uppity, which is a site ”about what older dykes and queers and lezzos wear and think and believe.” She fills us in. Links from this episode: Find more cool, older lesbians at 55 Uppity. The Australian Silver...
205: Living Secret Lives (Sophie Long)
July 23, 2015 08:08 - 21 minutesActor, standup and improvisor Sophie Long kind of has two secret lives. In one of them, she learned Impro at the Second City, where Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert got their start. It’s difficult to explain: which means sometimes it’s like having a secret life. It can so hard to know how to talk about it. Or when. And that’s before we get to Sophie’s other secret life. Links from this episode: Story night, Fabulous Monster; a bit more on Second City; read the Hyperbole and a Half comic; write...
204: Getting Bacteria to do What You Want (Nicholas Coleman)
July 23, 2015 08:08 - 21 minutesWe can actually do a lot just with bacteria. Microbiologist Nicholas Coleman wants to tell you exactly how much. We can build them into computers, redesign them and even use them as computers. Which you can eat. Links from this episode: Do some of this stuff yourself at Sydney’s Biofoundry; further afield, via DIY Bio’s great directory of spaces; at the iGEM competition (Sydney has a team this year); recreating a virus similar to the 1918 “Spanish” flu; make Nick’s life harder, learn about ...
203: How Pirates Get Organised (Kyra Maya Phillips)
July 23, 2015 08:08 - 21 minutesKyra Maya Phillips wrote a book trying to understand illicit economies with Alexa Clay, the Misfit Economy. But in this episode she’s geeking out about pirates. Get the lowdown on how pirates did things, from pirate voters in eighteenth-century Atlantic, through to the pirates with letterheads in twenty-first century Somalia. Links from this Episode: The book mentioned in the intro was Marcus Rediker’s Villains of All Nations; how Somali fishermen became pirates; yes really, there are pirat...
202: People Keep Grabbing My Hair (Ameisa Meima Konneh)
July 23, 2015 08:08 - 21 minutesHow would you feel if random strangers kept grabbing your hair? African Australian women deal with this all the time. It’s annoying, it’s humiliating and it’s about deeper things than just random hair touching. Ameisa Meima Konneh has African Australian hair. In fact, she wrote her honours thesis about life with African hair in Australia. She has thoughts. Links from this episode: Leaf through Ameisa’s thesis (pdf); see where your curly hair sits on a curl chart; the trailer for Chris Rock...
201: Gentleness in Dating (Emma Daniels)
July 23, 2015 08:08 - 19 minutesHow bad can a first date get? Emma Daniels has seen lots of first dates running her speed dating night, Dear Pluto. She likes first dates, she likes internet dating. She also wants to tell you that they work better with a little time thrown in. And also about that really bad first date she had that one time. Links from this episode: Emma wrote us an essay that goes with this episode, read it here. Songs in this episode: Hand to Mouth — Kim Boekbinder La Bicha — Bebe Hear more episodes ...
105: Difference (Clare Holland)
January 23, 2015 16:05 - 31 minutesNot What You Think has finished its summer run, but as a special podcast-only extra we're bringing you our never-before-broadcast pilot episode. For this (originally) internal pilot, FBi Managing Director Clare Holland talked to us about difference. Clare's family is pretty different. And, like most families, it's different for lots of reasons. Clare will talk about why difference is important to her, how her Mum's experience of being different changed her Dad and why a Muttaburrasaurus t-s...
104: Queer Sex Ethics (Viv McGregor)
January 16, 2015 23:40 - 32 minutesFor the final episode of Not What You Think, we're talking about ethics. Sexy, sexy ethics. The rights and wrongs in sex can get tricky for anyone. Does it get any trickier if you're queer? Viv McGregor is a Community Health Promotion Officer at the AIDS Council of NSW and one of the people behind its Claude initiative. And she reckons queer sexual ethics is something more people should get. Playlist and further reading at this episode's show page.
103: Families of Muslim Offenders (Ola El Hassan)
January 10, 2015 00:21 - 33 minutesWe’re talking about what happens when you go to jail. Not to you, but to your family. Families suffer along with the offender, but they haven’t really done anything wrong. There’s no map to work off: it can be like a kind of grief without the gravestone. It’s a harder territory still if you’re Muslim. Social worker and community activist Ola El Hassan thinks we should know all about that. She’s a driving force behind Locked Out, which brings together stories from Muslim women with loved...
102: Transient Global Amnesia (Alan Rosen)
January 03, 2015 00:28 - 34 minutesTwo years ago Zacha got an email from his Mum, Viv Miller. It started "As I write this to you, your father is spending the night in Belfast Hospital". It only got stranger from there. Zacha's father, Alan Rosen, tells us about why she wrote that letter. Playlist and further reading at this episode's show page.
101: Landfill (Blake Lindley)
December 27, 2014 00:38 - 33 minutesIn this first episode we talk landfill and how Sydney's kind of running out of it, with sustainability consultant Blake Lindley. Blake was suggested by Jess Hamilton. Playlist and further reading at this episode's show page at FBi Radio.
000 What is Not What You Think? (teaser)
December 24, 2014 05:54 - 1 minuteZacha takes a literal minute to try to explain what this program is even about. Not What You Think is a show for the quiet ideas. The first episode will air this Saturday, December 27 at 11am on FBi Radio in Sydney. It will really touch on exploding landfill. Subscribe at this podcast feed today to get it delivered to your device once it goes to air. More on our show page at FBi Radio.