Better Things

In this age when smoking is no longer cool, everyone has a tattoo and leather jackets are a staple fashion item, what does it mean to be a rebel? Music scholar and musician Associate Professor Sam Bennett weighs in.We narrow our lens to the music industry in this episode, and turn our gaze to the rebels amongst us today. Our conversation takes us from Lil Nas X to the revival of vinyl, double standards, and why some rebels are labelled heroes and others weirdos. One thing is clear though: we need rebels now more than ever.Samantha Bennett is a sound recordist, guitarist and academic from London, UK and Associate Professor in music at the ANU School of Music. She is the author of two monographs, Modern Records, Maverick Methods (Bloomsbury Academic) and Peepshow, a 33 1/3 series edition on the album by Siouxsie and the Banshees (Bloomsbury Academic). She is also a co-editor of Critical Approaches to the Production of Music and Sound (Bloomsbury Academic) and Popular Music, Stars and Stardom (ANU Press). Samantha has published numerous book chapters on the technological, sound recording and production aesthetics of recorded popular music and her journal articles are published in Popular Music, Popular Music and Society, The Journal of Popular Music Studies and IASPM@journal. In 2014, Samantha gave the biannual American Musicological Society Lecture at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum Library and Archives where she also held a research fellowship in 2015. As an AHRC Doctoral scholar, she completed her PhD in popular music recording techniques and analysis under renowned musicologist Prof. Allan Moore.As an educator, Samantha has fifteen years curriculum design, authorship and quality management experience and is the recipient of multiple teaching awards, notably a Vice Chancellor’s Teaching Fellowship at the University of Westminster (2012). She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Since arriving at the Australian National University in 2013, she has authored a broad music technology and popular music curriculum and, after securing a $250,000 major equipment grant, led the refurbishment of the School of Music's recording studio facilities to include the installation of a 48-channel Neve Genesys console and a blend of vintage and contemporary microphones and processors.Follow Sam on Twitter @samkbennett…The theme music for Better Things is “One More Time” by Fab Beat.Better Things is a production of the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences. It’s produced by Evana Ho. The production assistant for this episode was Brandon Tan.You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @ANUCASS.

Trust makes the world go around. It's what undergirds a functioning civil society and is a necessary aspect of all our interactions.So how can we tell who around us we can trust? Specifically, if someone has given us cause for doubt, how can we determine whether or not we can trust them? Philosopher Associate Professor Colin Klein is here to help.In our conversation, we also cover trust in the context of the Me Too movement, on Reddit, and in dating situations.Please note: this episode contains explicit language.Colin Klein is an associate professor in the School of Philosophy and a CI on the Humanising Machine Intelligence project at the Australian National University. He is a philosopher of science who focuses on neuroscience, computation, and the evolution of cognition. Before ANU, he held posts at Macquarie University and The University of Illinois at Chicago. He received his PhD in 2007 from Princeton University. His 2019 Australian Research Council Discovery Project “Trust in a Social and Digital World” (with Mark Alfano, Macquarie University) is currently investigating the role of network structure in maintaining both healthy and dysfunctional communities.…The theme music for Better Things is “One More Time” by Fab Beat.Better Things is a production of the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences. It’s produced by Evana Ho. The production assistant for this episode was Brandon Tan.You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @ANUCASS.

Professor Chris McAuliffe and his University of Queensland colleague are engaged in a project of modern archaeology, uncovering new insights about the late artist Robert Smithson by trawling through an archive of his belongings. Which raises the question: to what extent can we understand someone by examining what they own?We discover that the answer isn’t so simple. Our conversation takes us from our relationship to objects, to the degree to which we can truly know someone, to how much we even reveal about ourselves.Dr Chris McAuliffe is Professor of Art (Practice-led research) at the School of Art and Design, Australian National University and the Sir William Dobell Chair at the ANU Centre for Art History and Theory. From 2000–2013 he was Director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art, the University of Melbourne. He taught art history at the University of Melbourne (1988-2000) and was Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University (2011–12). Dr McAuliffe has curated exhibitions on Australian and international art. Recent projects include the exhibitions Robert Smithson: Time Crystals, University of Queensland Art Museum, 2018; We who love: Sidney Nolan’s slate paintings, University of Queensland Art Museum and Heide, 2016; and America: Painting a nation, Art Gallery of NSW, 2013.…The theme music for Better Things is “One More Time” by Fab Beat.Better Things is a production of the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences. It’s produced by Evana Ho.You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @ANUCASS.

There's a reason why Greek tragedy has the reputation that it does. But for all the suffering and loss, there is also hope and persistence. Classics academic Dr Sonia Pertsinidis explains what we can learn about resilience from ancient Greek mythology and drama. Hear the familiar, and not-so familiar, stories of Herakles, Demeter and Prometheus – and how they triumphed in the face of adversity. Dr Sonia Pertsinidis is a Lecturer and Convenor of Ancient Greek in the ANU School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics. She says: I was born and raised in Canberra and I am an ANU alumna and University Medallist. I was awarded my PhD in Classics at the ANU in 2010. After working as a government lawyer for several years, I joined the ANU as a full-time member of staff in July 2017. I became a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2018. I am passionate about Classics and, in particular, ancient Greek literature. I am interested in what ancient Greek literature reveals about ancient Greek society and culture and how this literature has shaped (and continues to shape) our own society and culture. I am teaching the following courses in 2019: • Traditional Grammar (CLAS1001/2011/6001): Semester 1 • Intermediate Ancient Greek I (GREK2121/6121): Semester 1 • Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasion in the Ancient and Modern Worlds (CLAS3000/6000): Semester 2 • Continuing Ancient Greek (GREK 1102/2119/6112): Semester 2 I regularly present public lectures, conference papers and seminars in Australia and overseas. I am the nominated staff member of the committee of the Friends of the ANU Classics Museum. I am a member of the School’s Outreach and Engagement Reference Group. I also serve as a Board Member of the Humanities and Creative Arts Board of ANU Press. In December 2018, I attended the prestigious ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellowship Research Leadership Mentoring Program at Melbourne University. Alongside Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Minchin, I am co-organising the Homer Seminar X (to be held at the ANU in December 2019). I regularly engage in outreach activities and publish a regular Classics blog, Aesop’s Fox. Follow Sonia on Twitter @aesopsfox1 … The theme music for Better Things is “One More Time” by Fab Beat. Better Things is a production of the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences. It’s produced by Evana Ho. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @ANUCASS.

There's a notion in western society that money taints love and friendship: witness our hang-ups over split billing, divorce settlements, and gift-giving. So you should seek to keep finance and relationships separate – right? “Money is always about social interdependency, and social interdependency is so often channelled through money,” says Dr Caroline Schuster. In this episode, Carly talks about how being aware of the way money and intimacy are inextricably linked can help us to make better financial decisions. She also references her research on microlending in Paraguay, and how looking beyond the numbers can reveal the stories and realities of everyday people. Dr. Caroline E. Schuster is a cultural anthropologist and Senior Lecturer in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the ANU. She is also the Director of the Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies (ANCLAS). My interest in informal markets, and particularly women’s livelihoods, drew her to study “microcredit” – small loans with no collateral – as part of a global trend of financial inclusion that brings banking services to poor women in the global south. Some of that work features in an article on how Microfinance could wind up being the new subprime in The Conversation and in her book, Social Collateral: women and microfinance in Paraguay’s smuggling economy. Her wider work centres on “Fintech” – technology and financial innovation. Her current research project, which is supported by an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, looks at consequential differences between modes of sharing risk and promising security through the lens of insurance cover. She explores disaster capitalism and the financialization of local risk-mitigation strategies in the context of our ever more unstable climate. … The theme music for Better Things is “One More Time” by Fab Beat. Better Things is a production of the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences. It’s produced by Evana Ho. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @ANUCASS.

It's a major problem in Australia and worldwide: our prison systems are overloaded and there's no end in sight. Governments here and overseas are laser-focused on reducing recidivism as one way of addressing this issue – but as ANU Criminologist Associate Professor Jason Payne suggests, that's likely not the answer. In fact, we have policies and programs that are potentially counter-productive to the goal of making our community safer. In this episode, we explore why it's so difficult to prevent crime, the relationship between who we're sending to prison and what the optimal recidivism rate should probably be, and where governments should be making a greater investment. ... Associate Professor Jason Payne is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the Australian National University (ANU). He holds a Bachelor in Social Science (Criminology), a Graduate Diploma in Languages (Japanese), a Master of Public Policy (Policy Analysis) and PhD in Criminology. Jason specialises in quantitative criminological methods, developmental and life-course criminology and drugs and crime. Since joining the ANU, Jason has developed and convened a number of teaching programs, including a successful executive training program - Data Analysis in Stata. He has been the successful recipient of a number of research grants and consultancies, including: Roettger. M. and Payne, J. (2015). Intergenerational trajectories of crime in the ACT: An exploratory data linkage study of Canberra’s highest volume offenders and their families. (College of Arts and Social Sciences - Internal Research Grants) Manning, M., Payne, J., Fleming, C., and Makkai, T. (2015). Determining the Cost of Alcohol to Law Enforcement (National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund (C1)) Payne, J., Brown, R. and Broadhurst R. (2014). Exploring the causes and consequences of the Australian crime decline: a comparative analysis of the criminal trajectories of two NSW birth cohorts (Criminology Research Council (C1)) Payne, J., and Willis, M. (2014). Piloting the incorporation of longitudinal data collection in the Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA) program. (Criminology Research Council (C1)) Payne, J., Keane, H., and Smith, GJD. (2015). Taking responsibility for academic integrity: a training module and Wattle platform for students and teachers. (College of Arts and Social Sciences Student Experience Grant). … The theme music for Better Things is “One More Time” by Fab Beat. Better Things is a production of the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences. It’s produced by Evana Ho. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @ANUCASS.

It's an age-old question: how do we get people to do what we want them to do? Well, if you're the government, you might leverage the social security system and withhold payments as punishment, or as “encouragement”. ANU social policy academic Dr Katie Curchin finds this method problematic, and argues instead for a social security system that treats people with greater respect and decency. She's looked in particular at the 'No Jab, No Pay' policy. In this episode, Katie talks about ways that not only governments, but we as individuals, could have greater success promoting certain behaviours without using carrots or sticks. There are lessons for both improving vaccination rates, parenting – and much more. ... Dr Katherine Curchin is a Lecturer in Social Policy within the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods and an Honorary Lecturer in the ANU School of Philosophy. Her research explores the extent to which policy can and should aim to change the behaviour of people living in poverty. Her published writing contributes to international debates on topics such as the ethics of welfare conditionality and nudging. From 2014 to 2018 she worked at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research where she held an ARC DECRA which enabled her to examine rival visions of Indigenous Australians’ relationship with the Australian welfare state. She is an editor of the Australian Journal of Social Issues and she has published in international journals such as the Journal of Political Philosophy, the Journal of Social Policy, the International Political Science Review and Women’s Studies International Forum. Read her Policy Space blog post ‘How Much Behavioural Conditionality is Too Much?’, which relates to this episode’s discussion. … The theme music for Better Things is “One More Time” by Fab Beat. Better Things is a production of the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences. It’s produced by Evana Ho. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @ANUCASS. Listen to our other podcast This Academic's Life: pivotal events and experiences that shaped the lives, careers and research of our academics.

Dr Katharina Bonzel watches movies, TV and videos for work. That might sound like a good deal – until you consider that she sometimes has to watch a single film up to 15 times. It’s all for a good cause though. She toils to elucidate the meanings being conveyed, how they’re conveyed, and what they say about society. But she doesn’t just watch the deeply intellectual stuff. She sees value in analysing mainstream fare – and here, she makes the case for why we should too. ... Dr Katharina Bonzel is a Screen Studies scholar in the ANU School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics. Her first monograph, National Pastimes: Cinema, Sports and Nation (University of Nebraska Press, 2020), examines the representation of national identity in sports films - from Rocky to Chariots of Fire. In her spare time she enjoys a spot of photography and American BBQ. Dr Bonzel is excited to be part of the new Screen Studies major and is teaching the Adaptation: From Text to Screen course. … The theme music for Better Things is “One More Time” by Fab Beat. Other music used in this episode: “New Castle” by Anitek. Better Things is a production of the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences. It’s produced by Evana Ho. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @ANUCASS.