Podcasts about best interview podcast

Adelaide Climate Action Week co-founder Mark Rowland joins Steve to unpack The Great AI Climate Debate, the Oxford-style contest his organisation staged this week between the “carbon glutton” and “silicon saviour” camps. Rather than settling for headline alarm about data centres guzzling power like mid-sized nations, Mark walks through the nuance: how much of that energy use is genuinely AI rather than general cloud computing, why the time horizon people use to judge AI shapes their verdict, and how concepts like the Jevons paradox and the “time value of carbon” complicate any tidy answer. He leaves listeners with a practical, human-scaled way to think about their own digital footprint. Renmark’s 23rd Street Distillery supplies the South Australian Drink of the Week, and it’s a genuine coup: their single malt has just been named Australian Distillery of the Year at the New York International Spirits Competition, outscoring Glenmorangie, Highland Park and a 31-year-old Crown Royal. Head distiller Paul Burnett returns to the show to talk peat, oak and the fine art of finishing a whiskey in casks that once held tawny, muscat and Tokay. The Musical Pilgrimage closes the episode on a reflective note, with Steve premiering his own composition, Higher Legacy, written for two Adelaide City Council gardeners whose combined century of service tending the city’s parks and squares is honoured on a plaque in Rymill Park — and for everyone, past and present, quietly building something worth protecting. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: The Great AI Climate Debate 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:04:00 SA Drink Of The Week There SA Drink Of The Week this week is 23rd Street Distillery Australian Single Malt Whisky. Steve opens with a pop quiz: name a South Australian product that just outscored Glenmorangie, Highland Park and a 31-year-old Crown Royal at a fraction of the price. It’s whiskey, specifically Renmark’s 23rd Street Distillery, freshly named Australian Distillery of the Year at the New York International Spirits Competition, with their single malt scoring 96 points against entries from 39 countries. Head distiller Paul Burnett, returning for another visit, credits the win to restraint rather than showmanship: a low-level peat profile, around half a percent in the finished blend, used as what he calls a “complexing agent,” paired with an unusually wide range of cask finishes, from first-fill bourbon barrels to old tawny, muscat and Tokay casks. Steve, tasting alongside him, works through notes of honeyed fruit, fig, all-spice and a citrus edge that shifts as the glass warms in his hand, while Paul walks through the distinction between “heads, hearts and tails” in distillation and how the team’s small-batch, six-way finishing blend has quietly shifted in proportion release after release. The pair also compare notes on serving it right: a proper tulip glass, a touch of water, room temperature rather than ice, and, in Paul’s case, a slice of chocolate or nuts alongside it. Steve, for his part, admits an evening spent testing whiskey sours and old fashioneds the night before only confirmed his preference for drinking it neat. 00:35:20 Mark Rowland and Adelaide Climate Action Week Steve opens by declaring his hand: he uses AI daily for work, has solar and a battery, drives an EV, and admits the more he learns about what sits behind that lifestyle, the less smug he gets to feel about it. It’s a fitting frame for a conversation built around nuance rather than tribal certainty. Mark explains why Adelaide Climate Action Week chose an actual Oxford-style debate over a polite panel discussion, tapping into people’s competitive instincts to get them to actually take a position rather than scroll through it. The audience voted before and after: undecided voters dropped from 24% to single digits, and belief that AI will be a net negative for climate rose from 56% to over 70%. The real story, though, was in the follow-up conversations, where the deciding factor wasn’t the argument itself but the time horizon people used. Ask about the next five years and the mood turns pessimistic; ask about 20 to 50 years out and people start to believe things will improve. The pair dig into the “carbon glutton” case, distinguishing AI-specific energy demand from data centres in general, since cloud storage and streaming were already drawing power long before AI arrived. Mark points out that air conditioning, EV charging and industrial electrification are all expected to outgrow AI’s energy demands in the years ahead, and that steel and concrete for data centre construction already account for roughly 14% of global emissions. He also raises a genuinely alarming case: a data centre approval in an African nation that led authorities to cut off a village’s water supply, with fatal consequences, the kind of guardrail failure he says South Australia needs to avoid as its own data centre legislation opens the door to rapid growth. On the more optimistic “silicon saviour” side, Mark describes a proposed Barossa data centre project that would generate two to three times the renewable energy it needs, feed the surplus back into the community, and capture atmospheric moisture from its waste heat to supply water to nearby farmers and wineries, reducing pressure on the Murray. He frames this as “hybrid intelligence” in action: letting machines handle the split-second optimisation work, like grid load-shifting to squeeze more renewables in without new poles and wires, while humans retain the judgement calls machines aren’t suited to. Steve presses on the Jevons paradox, the pattern where efficiency gains simply invite greater use rather than genuine savings, and confesses to his own sprawling AI toolkit, from Claude to NotebookLM to Suno. Mark’s response is refreshingly proportionate: an individual’s prompt volume is negligible against industrial-scale use, and Google’s own sustainability reporting shows the energy and water cost per prompt has dropped by roughly half in a couple of years, even as overall usage climbs. The conversation lands on the “time value of carbon,” the idea that AI’s emissions are happening now while its promised climate benefits, if they arrive at all, are speculative and delayed. It closes with Mark’s own conviction, shaped by a master’s degree in climate change, that humanity’s Anthropocene-era warming is real, drawn partly from personal memory of snow days in his native England that simply don’t happen anymore. Asked to leave listeners with something to hold onto, Mark returns to a theme James Clear would recognise from Atomic Habits: start with the smallest available step. Downloading rather than streaming a favourite album, watching YouTube at 720p instead of 4K on a phone, deleting old emails sitting in a data centre somewhere: none of it solves the problem alone, but it restores a sense of agency against the temptation to slide into overwhelm or apathy. Further information Adelaide Climate Action Week Google’s 11th annual Environmental Report 01:27:56 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage this week we listen to Higher Legacy by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos The Musical Pilgrimage takes an unexpectedly personal turn this week. Prompted by a photograph shared in a local Facebook group of a plaque in Rymill Park honouring brothers Antonio and Carmine Lepore, whose combined century of tending Adelaide’s parks and squares began back when Clydesdales still pulled bakers’ carts through the suburbs, Steve wrote an original song called Higher Legacy. Inspired by the plaque’s closing line, borrowed from the idea that a society grows great when people plant trees whose shade they’ll never sit in, the song also nods to Jane Goodall’s advice to Adelaide listeners years ago: when the world’s problems feel overwhelming, start with the square metre you’re standing on. Brought to life with Steve’s virtual session band, The Virtualosos, it’s offered as a piece for anyone who wants to take it, own it, and perform it as their own.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you’ve ever felt that nagging sense that the South Australia you were promised at the ballot box isn’t quite the one being delivered, this episode is for you. Stewart Sweeney arrived in Adelaide in 1975 to work inside the Dunstan government’s industrial democracy unit, and fifty years later he’s applying that same insider’s eye to a premier he believes is running the tobacco industry’s old doubt-sowing playbook against the citizens fighting to save the Park Lands. It’s a long, unhurried conversation – fitting, Steve notes, for an episode built around a Negroni “made to be sipped slowly and savoured.” On that note, before the main event, in the SA Drink Of The Week, Alexis and Tina Cattley – the show’s resident cocktail authorities – put Never Never’s Panettone Negroni through its paces, fresh off its win as World’s Best Contemporary Cocktail at the 2026 World Drink Awards in London. And in the Musical Pilgrimage, Adelaide music legend John Schumann returns with the Vagabond Crew to perform and unpack “Rag-tag Extremist Blues,” the song born directly from Malinauskas’ now-infamous put-down of Park Lands protesters. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Rag-Tag Extremists 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:04:32 SA Drink Of The Week There SA Drink Of The Week this week is Never Never Panettone Negroni. Steve, self-declared “Negroni newbie,” calls in reinforcements for this one: returning cocktail experts Alexis and Tina Cattley, last on the show refereeing a Crows-versus-Power gin showdown. They start with a reference Negroni built by Alexis from Never Never triple juniper gin, a Ruby Bitter in place of Campari, and a small-batch Rosso vermouth from David Franz, north of Adelaide – a drink Steve describes as landing “like a cloud-like pillow,” with a gentle bitter-orange finish. Tina, a self-described “Negroni naysayer” put off by Campari’s bitterness, finds herself won over by how the flavours linger and play off one another. Then comes the star of the segment: Never Never’s bottled Panettone Negroni, fresh from being crowned World’s Best Contemporary Cocktail at the 2026 World Drink Awards in London, and born behind the bar of the brand’s McLaren Vale distillery door before going nationwide. Built from triple juniper gin, a bitter citrus aperitif, sweet vermouth, aged muscat, orange liqueur, rye distillate and vanilla bean, it lands as something else entirely – “IMAX Christmas cake inside my mouth,” in Steve’s words. Alexis reckons it’s the perfect entry point for Negroni sceptics and a ready-made Christmas gift (buy two bottles, he warns – one won’t survive the wait), while Tina, newly vindicated in her Campari aversion, likens it to a sherry or port with all the spiced-cake flavour of the season, minus the traditional Negroni’s lingering bitterness. 00:18:51 Stewart Sweeney Stewart Sweeney has spent fifty years watching power slip loose from democratic control, and he’s watched a lot of it from the inside. In January 1978 he was working inside the Premier’s department when Don Dunstan sacked his own police commissioner over the Salisbury affair – a decision a Royal Commission later vindicated. Nearly fifty years on, Steve posits that the shoe is now on the other foot: where Dunstan acted because he felt deceived by an official, he contends today’s citizens are the ones being deceived, by a premier “savaging our Parklands for a golf tournament and a motorcycle race.” Sweeney’s own arrival in South Australia is a story in itself. A Glaswegian socialist who’d been coaching tennis in upstate New York and found himself unexpectedly unemployed back in Scotland, he stumbled into a tutoring job at the University of Tasmania, landed – almost by accident – in the middle of the Lake Pedder fight, and was introduced to the Democratic Labor Party within his first week in the country by his next-door neighbour, a young Gerard Henderson. From there it was a short hop to Adelaide and Don Dunstan’s Unit for Industrial Democracy, where Sweeney worked alongside economist Phil Bentley on an initiative to bring worker participation into South Australian workplaces – and where, as a footnote that says a great deal about how political communication has evolved, a young Mike Rann landed his very first Adelaide job doing media for the unit. Steve puts it to Sweeney that this early media training was the first real sign of rot in the system – the moment premiers became unreachable, hiding behind stage-managed doorstops instead of being interviewed. Sweeney doesn’t fully disagree, though he tempers it: whatever else came of it, Rann’s genuine gift was for writing speeches fast and communicating big-picture ideas clearly, “sort of decades before AI.” The conversation’s sharpest edge comes when Steve puts the government’s own numbers to Sweeney: the premier’s claim that only 585 of the Park Lands’ roughly 9,000 trees are affected by the disputed golf and motorsport development, against Park Lands management’s markedly different tally. Sweeney names the mechanism he believes is at work – the doubt strategy pioneered by the tobacco industry against the medical evidence on smoking. You don’t need to win the argument, he explains – you just need to plant enough doubt to keep people from acting on their convictions. Layer social media on top of that old tobacco-industry trick, he argues, and doubt becomes exponentially more powerful. Steve adds a live example of his own: an anti-protester Facebook page mocking demonstrators as “NIMBYs,” liked by the premier and half his ministry, that nobody in Labor will admit to running. None of this is abstract history for Sweeney – he’s a park guardian for Park 11 North, and he brings real texture to what’s actually at stake. He unpacks his argument that Adelaide’s Park Lands and squares are treated as “available” land rather than civic inheritance – fenced off for events for weeks at a time, repeatedly re-turfed and re-fenced in what he calls an annual cycle of “fence, event, repair” – and traces the intellectual lineage of the neoliberal thinking now driving those decisions back to a 1949 gathering in Switzerland convened by Friedrich Hayek. He also charts how a shrinking, disciplined leadership pipeline – what he only half-jokingly calls “Farrellism,” after Senator Don Farrell – has narrowed South Australian Labor’s internal debate at exactly the moment its base is most restless, evidenced by the wave of Adelaide residents telling him online, in effect, “I loved Peter Malinauskas, but now I hate Peter Malinauskas.” Sweeney closes on a note that’s more hopeful than the rest of the conversation might suggest. Reaching for the “world systems” thinking that has shaped his outlook for three decades, he reminds listeners that empires, ideologies and premierships all eventually give way to something else – pointing to the radical London reformers who dreamed up the idea of Adelaide in the first place, and to public servant Wainwright, whose ideas quietly transformed the Playford-era economy, as proof that a handful of good ideas, patiently pursued, can still redirect a small regional economy like ours. Further articles by Stewart Sweeney Manufacturing Doubt: Peter Malinauskas’s Political Weapon Think “outside the fence” Power without power: Is Farrellism Labor’s solution or its problem? Productivity is the symptom. Rentier capitalism is the disease 01:45:23 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage this week we listen to Rag-Tag Extremist Blues by John Schumann & The Vagabond Crew. The episode closes with John Schumann and the Vagabond Crew performing “Rag-Tag Extremist Blues” – a song that exists purely because Peter Malinauskas dismissed Park Lands protesters with that exact phrase. Schumann, a good deal more measured these days than in his fiery Redgum years, tells Steve he “grabbed it and expanded on it,” deliberately framing his cast of extremists as ordinary South Australians: a retired teacher, a war veteran, taxpaying citizens who’ve never broken a rule in their lives. He’s candid that his fear is less about the golf course – “that boat’s sailed” – and more about the MotoGP development still to come, and about a public whose attention span, he admits, will inevitably wane long before the next election. Streaming and download proceeds go directly to the Adelaide Park Lands Association, and the band will donate part of every ticket sold for their show at The Gov on 29 August to the same cause. Link to all things John Schumann including links to upcoming shows and musicSupport the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Author and podcaster Dr. Craig von Buseck is passionate about evangelism. As he considers how the number of global Christians remains flat even as world population has grown, von Buseck wants to inspire Christians to live and act in such a way to draw more individuals to Christ. The Practical Faith Academy Podcast from Cecil Taylor Ministries presents guests who have important things to say about putting your faith into practice. Cecil interviews each guest to understand their life stories and their ideas for living a seven-day practical faith. In this episode, Cecil and Craig discuss evangelism renewal that starts with a practical faith relationship with the Holy Spirit. As they consider how to use the Spirit and scripture as our guides, this leads to leveraging our individual gifts to present Jesus to those around us. The conversation turns to what unique messages Christianity offers and how we can approach the next generation. Highlights of the podcast:  3:03  Why it's important to put our faith into practice each day, given Christianity's lack of growth across the world 5:06  How can we renew our evangelism efforts? 7:53  The importance of a relationship with God through the Holy Spirit, and how to hear the Spirit's voice 16:36  The role of relationships in evangelism 24:49  Christianity's unique messages to those who are not Christian 33:01  How Christians can positively respond to the challenges of reviving Christianity 40:59  How to find von Buseck's books and other material   Dr. Craig von Buseck offers his books, speaking, teaching, and more at https://www.vonbuseck.com. The site also contains links to his interviews on podcasts and radio programs. During this episode, von Buseck refers to his first book, “Seven Keys to Hearing God's Voice.” You can find out more about the book and purchase it by accessing his website. I'm Cecil Taylor – award-winning author, speaker, blogger, and of course, podcaster. I'm focused on teaching Christians to live their faith and represent Jesus every day of the week. Everything I offer for your faith journey can be found at the same starting point: https://www.CecilTaylorMinistries.com. Please visit and find ways to enrich your daily walk. The Practical Faith Academy has been honored with the Selah Silver award for Best Interview Podcast. You can check out the winners and find other Christian podcasts by following this link: https://www.blueridgeconference.com/2026-brmcwc-award-winners/ For regular, free assistance for your faith journey or your parenting journey, please sign up for my free newsletters, either on the main ministry site (https://www.CecilTaylorMinistries.com) or my parenting site (https://www.UnisonFamily.com). Simply scroll down while visiting either home page to find the registration form. On CecilTaylorMinistries.com, I offer Ministry Connection (practical faith tips plus updates on my ministry) and Backstage Pass (an insider look at the behind-the-scenes of my life and my ministry). Backstage Pass also chronicles my writing journey as I work on two new books during 2026. On UnisonParenting.com, I offer the Unison Parenting newsletter. I'm joined by parenting experts to provide useful tips and thoughts for parenting children of all ages. I also offer Instant Content curriculum to small groups and adult Sunday School classes, as I mentioned on the podcast. Go to https://www.CecilTaylorMinistries.com and click on Books & Videos at the top of the page. For proven parenting advice that shows how you can raise high self-esteem children to mature, independent adulthood while staying aligned as parents in a harmonious family atmosphere, please visit https://www.UnisonFamily.com. That's my parenting site, also accessible from the main site. Thanks for listening to the podcast! Please subscribe to be notified about future podcasts. You can also find dozens of prior podcasts with great guests and topics by searching for Practical Faith Academy.

If last episode cracked open the lid on South Australian politics, this one peers inside the engine. Steve Davis reunites with international relations analyst David Olney, and is joined by long-time Adelaide Show political commentator Robert Godden for a compact but chewy conversation about why our democratic system reliably produces a certain kind of politician, and what, if anything, citizens can actually do about it. The SA Drink of the Week does not feature in this episode. The Musical Pilgrimage closes the episode with something deeply personal: Steve’s original song, Goodnight Don, a Brechtian cabaret-styled tribute to Don Dunstan that names Steele Hall as an unlikely hero of South Australian progress; a fitting coda to an episode about leaders who felt compelled, rather than merely ambitious, to change the world. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: The Adelaide Show Spin Detector 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:02:00 David Olney and Steve Davis David Olney’s opening thesis sets the frame: stop blaming the individual politician and look at the system that produced them. Political parties absorb people at eighteen. By their mid-thirties, the successful ones know the rules, know who to listen to, and know how to sell the message. Whatever they were before they entered that pipeline is largely beside the point. Party discipline does the rest. Robert Godden comes at it from economics, or more precisely from the widespread misunderstanding of it. Almost every political party fails to grasp that incentivisation and punishment change behaviour, which is why the same voters who accept cigarette taxes as behaviour-modification tools will simultaneously insist that everything else they disapprove of should be dealt with outside the law. Godden’s observation that he would personally outlaw religion and instant coffee, while conceding not everyone shares his distress about either, is the episode’s warmest moment in a conversation that doesn’t have many warm ones. The thread tying both arguments together is shame. For hundreds of years, Godden argues, the one reliable corrective available to citizens was the ability to shame politicians into doing the right thing. That rulebook got torn up in 2016. Steve says “because of Trump.” Godden confirms it. Two words and the subject is closed. After Godden departs, the conversation turns to what collective action actually looks like when the system is this good at absorbing or deflecting pressure. Steve raises Possum Park as an example of the government’s capacity to flood the zone, announcing Gather Round to push the other issue off the front page. Olney draws on Ted Robert Gurr’s theory of relative deprivation: collective action only rebuilds when enough people believe both that things should be better and that they are in fact getting worse. We are only just entering that zone. The grassroots energy Steve is seeing is not wishful thinking; it is the early stage of the only mechanism that has ever produced real political change. Barbara Pocock closes the argument. She is Olney’s model of the kind of leader collective action eventually produces: not someone who wanted to rule the world, but someone who looked at the state of things and felt she could no longer sit and do nothing. The contrast with the party-machine pathway, Malinauskas entering politics through the party room before he ever held a seat, Ashton Hurn as Marshall’s comms manager before pre-selection, is left to speak for itself. The Spin Detector Steve has built a tool, available on The Adelaide Show website, inspired by Ed Coper’s Angertainment and a good deal of additional thinking. You paste in a social media post and its comments. You choose whether you want a draft reply or simply an analysis of what rhetorical move is being played. The tool’s one job is to identify the mechanism, name it, and give you the option to respond or simply move on better informed. The worked example is a meme circulating from a One Nation-adjacent account: Gina Rinehart above, Albanese below, the implicit message being that her money is hers to spend and his is yours to waste. Pasted into the Spin Detector, the tool surfaces what the meme papers over. Rinehart’s wealth comes from royalties on sovereign natural resources. As Olney notes immediately, that makes her money our money, and we have a system that allows her to keep taking it. The same voters this meme targets often also support taxing international gas companies on the same principle. The meme cannot survive both positions, but that inconvenience is the point of the meme. Olney’s observation about pace is the practical underpinning: every second between seeing something and reacting is a second in which the emotional charge dissipates and clearer thinking becomes possible. The Spin Detector is a structured pause. Steve calls it a mini David in a bottle. Olney asks only that nobody shake it. Steve is open about the fact that hosting logistics are still being worked out, and that if the tool proves useful, a conversation with Ed Coper about something larger may follow. The following resources were mentioned during the episode. Books Angertainment by Ed KoperThe Spin Detector 00:31:38 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage this week we listen to Goodnight Don by Steve Davis & The Virutalosos. The closing conversation touches on what Don Dunstan would make of a Labor government in 2025, and on the historical context Steve uncovered while writing the song: that neoliberalism had not yet fully gripped the Labor party during Dunstan’s era, that shift arriving more in John Bannon’s time, and that Steele Hall, Dunstan’s political opponent, played a genuine role in making the reform era possible by supporting electoral changes that cost him politically but were simply the right thing to do. Goodnight Don is Steve’s original composition, performed by Steve Davis and The Virtualosos, written for a cabaret performer to take on and bring to life. It gives Steele Hall his own verse, which feels right in the context of an episode about the rarity of politicians who act from obligation rather than calculation. Steve writes all lyrics by hand. The Virtualosos bring them to life. PS The image for this episode was taken as part of the SA Electoral Commission's campaign to urge people to vote in the 2026 State Election.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pat Domangue came to faith in her thirties but has made up for lost time since then. Now the author of eight published Bible studies, Domangue is the founder of On Fire Ministries, focused on ministering to women. The Practical Faith Academy Podcast from Cecil Taylor Ministries presents guests who have important things to say about putting your faith into practice. Cecil interviews each guest to understand their life stories and their ideas for living a seven-day practical faith. In this podcast, Domangue shares her faith journey from the days of trying to figure out who Jesus is, to the present when she's teaching techniques for reading the Bible. Domangue also tells what inspired her latest Bible study book, “My Maker and Me,” and outlines a number of ideas useful for putting your faith into practice.  Highlights of the podcast: 2:55 Why it's important for us to put faith into practice 6:50 What it was like to come to the Lord later in life 8:51 How Domangue discerned, and how God confirmed, her call to minister to women 14:42 How to find spiritual and emotional healing through the Bible 17:09 How taking a pottery class informed Domangue's book, “My Maker and Me”  19:35 A method for women to become more proficient in reading and understanding the Bible 28:26 Advice for women considering ministry as a profession 31:11 The hardest part about putting faith into practice 32:53 Domangue's best tip for developing and maintaining a seven-day practical faith 35:47 How to find all of Domangue's resources   Pat Domangue is a Bible teacher, author, speaker, and the founder of On Fire Ministries. She helps Christian women experience transformation through God's Word so they can live with freedom, healing, and confidence in Christ. Domangue's website is https://www.onfire-ministries.org. She's offering a free gift of a 21-day reading of Ephesians as a guide to spiritual detox and replenishment. Her monthly podcast is named H.E.R., standing for Healing & Encouragement for Real life, with Christian women in all walks of life as her guests. Domangue offers free and paid Bible studies as well, including her eighth Bible study book for sale, “My Maker and Me.” I'm Cecil Taylor – award-winning author, speaker, blogger, and of course, podcaster. I'm focused on teaching Christians to live their faith and represent Jesus every day of the week. Everything I offer for your faith journey can be found at the same starting point: https://www.CecilTaylorMinistries.com. Please visit and find ways to enrich your daily walk. The Practical Faith Academy has been honored with the Selah Silver award for Best Interview Podcast. You can check out the winners and find other Christian podcasts by following this link: https://www.blueridgeconference.com/2026-brmcwc-award-winners/ For regular, free assistance for your faith journey or your parenting journey, please sign up for my free newsletters, either on the main ministry site (https://www.CecilTaylorMinistries.com) or my parenting site (https://www.UnisonFamily.com). Simply scroll down while visiting either home page to find the registration form. On CecilTaylorMinistries.com, I offer Ministry Connection (practical faith tips plus updates on my ministry) and Backstage Pass (an insider look at the behind-the-scenes of my life and my ministry). Backstage Pass also chronicles my writing journey as I work on two new books during 2026. On UnisonParenting.com, I offer the Unison Parenting newsletter. I'm joined by parenting experts to provide useful tips and thoughts for parenting children of all ages. I also offer Instant Content curriculum to small groups and adult Sunday School classes, as I mentioned on the podcast. Go to https://www.CecilTaylorMinistries.com and click on Books & Videos at the top of the page. For proven parenting advice that shows how you can raise high self-esteem children to mature, independent adulthood while staying aligned as parents in a harmonious family atmosphere, please visit https://www.UnisonFamily.com. That's my parenting site, also accessible from the main site. Thanks for listening to the podcast! Please subscribe to be notified about future podcasts. You can also find dozens of prior podcasts with great guests and topics by searching for Practical Faith Academy.

This is not a typical Adelaide Show episode. For the first time in 434 instalments, Steve Davis opens by confessing he’s not sure how many more episodes there will be because something has broken in him. Not in South Australia’s people, whom he loves unreservedly, but in his trust of the state’s governance. What follows is one of the most honest conversations the show has ever hosted. There is no SA Drink of the Week this episode. The mood didn’t call for it. In the Musical Pilgrimage, Steve closes with Australia Day by Steve Davis & The Virtuosos, a song whose thesis turns out to be the quiet heart of everything discussed: that we’ve retreated into our selfish dwellings, stopped sticking our arms over the fence to say hello, and in doing so have left ourselves vulnerable to exactly the kind of politics this episode is about. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Something Has Broken: SA Politics, the Park Lands, and the Politics of Distraction 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:03:15 David Olney and Steve Davis Steve opens by describing where he is: not disconnected from South Australia’s people, but from its governance. He says he is earnestly worried, and that there is no performative aspect to the episode. To stress-test his thinking and provide context, he has invited back David Olney, whose academic background covers history, international politics, international security, and complex problem-solving. David notes that colleagues once told him he thought more like a psychologist or neurologist than a political scientist, always searching for the human motivation beneath structural problems. David introduces the work of political theorist Ted Robert Gurr, who studied the conditions preceding revolution across different periods of history. Gurr found two sequential thresholds: first, when people stop believing things will get better; and second, when they become convinced things are actively getting worse. Steve places himself at Gurr’s second threshold, citing the government’s handling of the algal bloom, a secret tower deal at peppercorn rent, tree clearing in the Park Lands for a golf event, and the prospect of further clearing for a motorcycle race. His concern is not with the events or sports themselves but with the irreversible damage to trees that Tourism SA uses to represent Adelaide. Two further things have deepened Steve’s despair. The first is what he reads as a coordinated flood of upbeat ministerial social media videos that do not address the Park Lands issue at all. He sees it as a tactic borrowed from Trump’s playbook. The second is the government’s launch of a media literacy tool to help students decode messaging, at the same time as the government itself, in Steve’s view, avoids transparency, attacks critics personally rather than engaging with their arguments, and operates through private deals. David draws on Rebecca Costa’s book The Watchman’s Rattle to frame this: Costa observed that as civilisations struggle to deal with significant problems, political attention shifts to small and peripheral ones. David’s illustration from literature is the war in Gulliver’s Travels fought over which end of a boiled egg to crack. Steve recommends the book Angertainment by Ed Koper as a guide to recognising this pattern. He uses Koper’s framing to contrast two dystopian visions: Orwell’s 1984, where repression at least provokes resistance, and Huxley’s Brave New World, where a population entertained into passivity never finds cause to push back. David agrees that Huxley’s version is the more troubling of the two. David then explains neoliberalism at Steve’s request: the economic model adopted across the English-speaking world in the early 1980s under Thatcher, Reagan, and Hawke, which replaced mixed economies with market-driven ones. David argues that the mixed economy model of the postwar decades, while imperfect, delivered stable living standards and could absorb shocks. What replaced it produced private monopolies, underinvestment in infrastructure and services, and a political landscape where both major parties operate within the same economic framework. His summary: in Australia, both parties wear one jackboot and one fluffy slipper. David connects this to the growth of parties like One Nation and Britain’s Reform Party, arguing that voters who have seen no meaningful improvement from either major party are reaching for alternatives, not out of ideological conversion but out of exhaustion. Steve raises a related concern: that the same billionaire interests bankrolling One Nation-type parties have no real incentive to disrupt neoliberalism, which raises questions about where that political energy actually leads. Toward the end of the episode, Steve reads from a reply he has just received from his federal member, written in response to a handwritten letter he sent six weeks earlier about a gas tax. The reply is considered and personal, acknowledging hundreds of individual constituent responses and explaining the member’s position. Steve describes it as a strand still holding, though he is careful not to place too much weight on it. David names two economists whose recent books offer some grounds for thinking a better model is possible: Mariana Mazzucato and Daron Acemoglu. Steve closes by naming David Pocock as an example of what a politician in this era can be, and David adds Barbara Pocock to that list. The episode ends with a brief exchange about what Don Dunstan and Malcolm Fraser might have made of where their respective parties have ended up. The following resources were mentioned during the episode. Books Angertainment by Ed KoperThe Watchman’s Rattle by Rebecca CostaBrave New World by Aldous Huxley1984 by George OrwellAmusing Ourselves to Death by Neil PostmanThe Common Good Economy by Mariana Mazzucato Podcasts The Rest is Politics with Alastair Campbell and Rory StewartThe Rest is Politics US featuring Anthony Scaramucci 00:42:34 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage this week we listen to Australia Day by Steve Davis & The Virutalosos. Steve introduces Australia Day as a song exploring how Australia lost the social conditions that made postwar migrant integration work. The central argument is that Italians, Greeks, and Vietnamese newcomers were absorbed into communities partly because people had time and proximity, sticking their arms over fences and saying hello. McMansions, mobile phones, and an economic model built on scarcity and anxiety have eroded that. David adds that prime ministers who romanticised the 1950s as a human ideal were simultaneously promoting the economic model that made those conditions impossible to replicate. Steve writes the songs and uses a virtual session band to produce them, with the hope that a live musician will one day take them further.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are episodes of The Adelaide Show, and then there are events. This is one of the latter. Recorded live at the Mercury Cinema as part of South Australia’s History Festival 2026, History Hit Parade brings together broadcaster and journalist Keith Conlon and host Steve Davis for a ninety-minute show that weaves original songwriting with storytelling, historical context, and the kind of warm, unhurried conversation that feels like sitting in a room full of people who actually know where you live. Ten songs. Ten slices of South Australian life. All of them written with pen and paper by Steve, given musical life through his AI-assisted “virtual session band,” and offered here as what he describes as “audition pieces” for real musicians who might one day make them their own. There is no SA Drink of the Week in this episode. The entire show is the Musical Pilgrimage. Rather than a single track appended at the end, this episode is the songs, each one set up by Keith’s historical grounding and Steve’s personal connections before the music rolls. Full notes on each song appear in the segment breakdown below. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: History Hit Parade 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:04:07 History Hit Parade The Mercury Cinema is not a neutral venue for Steve Davis. He was married there on a sweltering 42-degree December day in 2002. He launched Talked About Marketing there. And it is where, on two days in May 2026, he and Keith Conlon performed History Hit Parade to an audience that included Steve’s parents, his former drama teacher, the chair of the History Trust, and the real-life couple immortalised in one of the songs. The name History Hit Parade, Steve reveals, was Keith’s idea, drawn from his memory of the Harold Wright Hit Parade on 5AD, a Thursday-night ritual of about eight or ten songs in an era before the Top 40 existed. Buddy Holly, Elvis, Perry Como, and Pat Boone: that was your week’s music. The name lands perfectly for a show that does something similar, except every track is an original, and every track is South Australian. Song 1: Jack and Lil (Up Please, Going Up)Keith sets the historical scene: John Martins began as Peters and Martin, a drapery store in Rundle Street, until Mr Martin was released from his duties due to what Keith delicately describes as “debauchery.” The Hayward family eventually took the helm, and it was Sir Edward Hayward who, in 1933, looked to Canada for inspiration and brought the Christmas Pageant to Adelaide. He was so nervous before the first one that he hired a biplane, circled the inner suburbs with a megaphone, and personally invited people to come. They did. About 300,000 still do, each year.The personal thread in this song belongs to Steve’s maternal grandparents, Jack and Lil, whose photograph appeared on the screen behind him. Lil worked in the kitchenware department. Jack was the young engineer installing the new lifts in the building during the 1930s. The rest, as Steve says, is history. The song follows their life together as their family grows, moving floor by floor through what John Martins offered, with the lift ladies’ announcement, “Up please, going up,” as its guiding refrain. Steve thanks Paul Flavell, who has written a book on John Martins, and former John Martin’s planner, Robert Tedstone, who provided a complete floor-by-floor inventory to keep the lyrics accurate. Song 2: Oh MarionMarion, the suburb, was surveyed in 1838 by Colonel Light’s private firm after Light had broken with Governor Hindmarsh. The name comes from Marianne, daughter of resident commissioner James Hurtle Fisher, though somewhere along the way Mariannen became Marion. Keith’s own connection is fond: his father learned to drive in the 1950s by heading south into the almond groves and vineyards of Marion, where the long straight roads offered room to practise.Steve’s Marion is the 1970s version: aerial photographs, numbered landmarks, railway tracks where he’d flatten 20-cent pieces, overpass pile drivers thumping for weeks, and a Coles New World at the Park Holme Shopping Centre. He walked to school at age six, “with my little satchel and my shorts.” One afternoon he left school early, got lost, and found his way to a doctor’s surgery he recognised. They rang his mother. She wasn’t home. The neighbour came to collect him and made him a sandwich. “That was life in Marion back then,” he says, with a fondness that carries no nostalgia for the vineyards his own family’s house helped displace. Song 3: My Jolly ValentineThis one starts with the Torrens. Keith explains that before the lake arrived, the river in summer was “a series of rather smelly waterholes” until Mayor Sir Edwin Smith, a beer baron with civic ambitions, created the weir. Within a year of the lake’s arrival in 1882, a rowing craze had taken hold, boat sheds lined the banks, and Jolley’s Boathouse was selling milkshakes and pies to rowers who could rent a boat by the hour.The Palais de Danse gets its moment: a floating ballroom on a barge moored near the Elder Park Rotunda from 1924, with a soda fountain, no grog, and 800 people on opening night. It was gone by 1928, Keith noting, “maybe it was just not well made and sank slowly into the mud.”Steve’s research for this Valentine’s Day song turned up two details that captured his imagination. First, the Rundle Street Parade: on Saturday nights, young men would walk down one side of the street, young women down the other, window-shopping for company rather than goods. Second, the postage stamp code used in the twice-daily mail service to communicate what couldn’t be written openly: upside-down meant “I love you,” tilted right meant yes, left meant no, sideways meant “let’s stay as friends,” which Steve notes is “a soft no.” Song 4: Spring Gully RoadKeith traces the geography first: up Third Creek from the Torrens, past the village of Magill, pointing toward Norton Summit. Market gardens that ran through to Tea Tree Gully. One of Steve’s friends, Dominic, remembers his father loading a ute with cucumbers twice a week and driving them across town to Spring Gully. That was not long ago.The song covers four generations families. Edward McKee began pickling onions after returning from the war. His son-in-law Alan McMillan, stepson Eric Webb, and friend Malcolm Climer formed the second generation. Kevin and Ross Webb steered it through 2013 when a public campaign saved the company. Russell and Tegan Webb were at the helm when cheap imports and cost-of-living pressures finally made it too hard.Steve played the song to Russell Webb before the performance. Russell’s response: “Our whole family thinks this song should be in the state archives for covering the story so well.” Steve says it with quiet pride, and then lets the song make the case. Song 5: Away, Away (The PS Canally Crew Song)Keith tells the founding story of the Murray River trade with the energy of someone who could spend a full hour on it. Governor Sir Henry Fox Young puts up a prize in 1853 for the first boat to take a paddle steamer from Goolwa to Swan Hill and back. Two men are unknowingly racing: Captain William Randell, a flour miller from Gumeracha building the Mary Ann upstream from Mannum, and Captain Francis Cadell, who has a paddle steamer built in New South Wales and sails it through the Murray mouth. They end up racing each other, neither knowing the other was coming. Both get their prize, and instantly the river is transformed: wool that was a month away from market by bullock wagon is now days away by water.Steve wrote this song aboard the PS Marion, on a three-day cruise, watching jet skis cut through the peace of the river and thinking about the crews who worked these boats without rest. He noted he’d been “a bit passionate” about the contrast. One thing he is proud of: annoying the captain by asking about terminology, which is how he discovered that “larboard” was the original term for port side, changed because “larboard” and “starboard” were too easily confused when shouted across a noisy deck. Song 6: Shout Your Mates Another RoundThis song grew from a drive past the West End Brewery site on Port Road, now demolished. The chimney is gone. Steve felt its absence.Keith sketches the arc: South Australia once had around 43 breweries. The West End Brewery operated from 1859 through to about 1980, and somewhere in there a Westies supporter working at the brewery persuaded the boss to paint the chimney in the SANFL grand final colours each year. Port Adelaide’s coach Fos Williams asked to be included. The tradition held, moved to a second chimney after the first came down, and now continues on the old brickworks chimney with the help of some “fancy technology.”The pickaxe long-neck bottle gets its own verse. Those amber glass communal bottles that sat on dinner tables, shared rather than individual. Steve remembers the day his Italian neighbour Nino offered him a sip of Southwark Bitter from one: “It put me off beer for the rest of my life.” He recalls his paternal grandfather worked at the original Hindley Street brewery. A bottle recently turned up on Kangaroo Island. These things accumulate meaning. Song 7: Tunarama Love SongGreg and Nicole, Steve’s brother-in-law and sister-in-law, are in the audience. They wave when introduced. Greg is described as “so bashful.”Keith gives the historical context: Captain Matthew Flinders named Memory Cove after losing eight sailors there when he was 28 years old, 10,000 miles from home. He named Cape Catastrophe, Thistle Island, and Boston Island after those men. Port Lincoln was named, Keith theorises, from homesickness for Lincolnshire. The tuna industry came after the war, when scientists found massive schools in the Bight. Colin Thiele wrote Bluefin there as a high school teacher, which became a film. Tunarama itself began in 1962.The song’s story is Greg’s: he left Adelaide on a bicycle heading west, eventually reached Port Lincoln, and through mutual friends met Nicole. They came back to Adelaide later that year and were at the Mercury Cinema for Steve and Nardia’s wedding. “Their love story didn’t actually happen at Tunarama,” Steve admits, “but my wife loves her rom-com movies, so I did a bit of rom-com where I just put it against the backdrop.” He also notes that Tunarama won Best Seafood Experience this year, and that “it is okay to call someone a tosser, at Tunarama.” Song 8: Good Night DonThis one has weight. Every episode of The Adelaide Show signs off with “Good night, Don,” so a song about Don Dunstan was, as Steve puts it, always going to happen. Keith, who lived through the Dunstan decade, tries to give it its due in a few minutes. Decriminalisation of homosexuality. Women’s rights reforms. Aboriginal land rights. The South Australian Film Corporation in 1972. The State Theatre Company in 1974. The Rundle Mall, celebrating its 50th anniversary later in 2026. The week of the performance happened to be the anniversary of the death of Dr George Duncan, thrown into the Torrens in 1972, a murder that accelerated the push for decriminalisation.Keith acknowledges the controversies too: the Salisbury Affair, the personal challenges, the pajama press conference, and, with particular relish, the day Don stood on the Pier Hotel balcony during the 1976 tidal wave scare and told the crowd that “the only thing that will happen today is that we will all get a bit hotter.”Steve wrote the song in Brechtian cabaret style, a nod to Don’s close friendship with Robyn Archer. The refrain draws on a George Bernard Shaw quote: “Your life was no brief candle, was a mighty torch that shone.” Steele Hall also gets a verse, recognised for his willingness to equalise the electoral boundaries even when it worked against his own party. Song 9: Cellar Door ShuffleKeith went to university with Malcolm Seppelt, “which was pretty helpful,” and takes us back to the first commercial vineyard up Jacob’s Creek, planted by Johann Gramp, one of the early German arrivals. The creek became the name of one of the most recognised wine labels in the world. The doctors follow: Penfold, Hamilton, Angove, Tolley. Keith notes that by the 1960s, 90% of South Australian grapes were going into fortifieds. Barossa Pearl and BenEan Moselle changed that. Keith asks the audience who had a sip of BenEan Moselle as a youngster. Most hands go up.The song is partly in honour of Joseph, who runs Ballycroft at Greenock. Steve describes him as “the sweet spot of wine tasting because it’s not stuffy with him.” The song delivers two reminders: if your cellar door is making you feel uncomfortable, leave; and you are not there to guzzle. Song 10: Ben Venuti (The Rostrevor Pizza Bar Song)The final song is an ode to Gaetano at Rostrevor Pizza Bar, who has stood behind the same counter for 35-plus years.Keith sets up the context with Don Dunstan’s liquor reforms: the end of the six o’clock swill, and the radical notion of drinking a glass of wine at a footpath cafe. Then the postwar wave of Italian migrants, and how pizza arrived in Adelaide. Keith’s first was in 1962 at a corner of Hindley and Morphett Streets, long since demolished. “In another ten years,” he predicts, “there’ll be Australians who reckon we actually made it.”Steve moved to Rostrevor in 2006 and spent his evenings stripping 1970s Italian wallpaper off the walls of his new house before heading around the corner to eat Gaetano’s pizza. Gaetano calls his dough “pastry,” starts making it the night before, and has won awards for it. He welcomes every regular by name. He personally refuses to put pineapple on a pizza, but if you want it, he will make it. “The Italians,” Steve says, “they understand the value of the money.” He goes through about a pallet of pineapple a month.The song is in Italian and close-to-Italian, with the chorus “Benvenuti, come inside” running through it. Steve says you will come along for the ride. ClosingSteve thanks the audience and invites them to stay in touch with Keith via This Day in South Australia on Facebook and LinkedIn, where Keith posts about South Australian history every day, and via the Wednesday morning bike rides from Bicycle Express in the city at 9am. He then plays the old State Bank ad, which Keith greets with “Oh, dear. Well, I wasn’t actually named at the time, but a lot of people said, ‘I reckon that’s Keith in there.'”Steve closes by noting that the album from the show, History Hit Parade, is available on Bandcamp. 00:00:00 Musical Pilgrimage No Musical Pilgrimage this week because the whole show was a Musical Pilgrimage.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

South Australia’s History Festival gets a fitting soundtrack in episode 432, and it arrives in three distinct voices: a geneticist-historian overturning stones in founding-era South Australia, Mr South Australia himself bringing context and colour to every corner of the conversation, and an original paddle steamer shanty that had Keith Conlon attempting to haul imaginary ropes. Dr Samantha Battams is back for her fourth visit to the Adelaide Show, this time with a book that drops her own family tree right into the founding moments of this state. There is no SA Drink of the Week in this episode. The interview was recorded at the State Library with a room booking that had a firm end time, so Steve, Keith, and Samantha made the most of every minute with stories instead. The Musical Pilgrimage this episode is Steve Davis and the Virtualosos performing Away Away: The Canally Crew Song, an original river shanty written in tribute to the paddle steamer PS Canally, which is being restored at Morgan and set to relaunch in late May 2026, and the song features in Keith and Steve’s show, History Hit Parade show at the Mercury Cinema. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: All Singing All Reading South Australian History Festival 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:02:09 Dr Samantha Battams on Paving the Way May is South Australian History Festival month, and if you want to know why that matters, consider this: the western suburb we now call Grange was once known as Reedbeds, where Captain Charles Sturt made his first home while the colony was being developed. One of our guest’s ancestors was the gardener there. Dr Samantha Battams has written a book that puts her own family tree right in the founding moments of this state, and she’s launching it at the History Festival on 15th May. Samantha, has previously been on The Adelaide Show in 249 – Captain Harry Butler and his Red Devil, 279 – The Secret Art Of Poisoning, and 344 – True Crime SA style. The western suburb we now know as Grange was once called Reedbeds. Captain Charles Sturt made his home there in the colony’s earliest days, and one of Dr Samantha Battams’ ancestors was his gardener. That’s the kind of connection Paving the Way is full of. Battams’ three-times great-grandfather, Johann Gramp, arrived at Kangaroo Island in 1837 as an eighteen-year-old orphan aboard a vessel that wrecked shortly after. He had lost both parents by age seven, worked for a baker in Bavaria, and made his way to Hamburg where the South Australia Company was recruiting German labourers. He would go on to establish what Keith Conlon describes as the first commercial vineyard near Jacobs Creek. Keith also notes that he gets there by a roundabout route, and Samantha fills in the Bavarian versus Prussian distinctions that get flattened when viewed from Australian distance. The animosity ran deep enough that during the First World War, Bavarians were reportedly directing Allied forces toward Prussian positions. The Prussian Lutheran refugees who arrived sponsored by George Fife Angus get their own thread. Their pastor Kavel had travelled to London and secured passage for a group who had been holding secret chapel meetings in barns rather than accept the king’s new prayer book. One Schulz ancestor was accused by the pastor of leaving for earthly reasons rather than faith. Steve’s response: “I think had it been the time of the prosperity gospel, he would’ve been welcomed with open arms. “From Germany to Ireland, and the Fahy family from County Clare. Edmund Fahy arrived with two younger sisters, one of them just ten years old, and the family was almost immediately separated. Edmund headed to the Kapunda mines while the girls went south with an aunt. Samantha spent years untangling the network of Irish immigrants who came out together, sponsored one another, and intermarried across the colony. One thread leads to Dave Graney. “I’ve always loved Dave Graney,” Battams says. “I didn’t know I was related to him.” The Rumbleow family at Encounter Bay ran the first tourist operations in the area. Caroline Rumbleow, who married a man named John Cakebread (“What a name,” says Steve), was said to be the inspiration for a character in the novel Paving the Way by Simpson Newland, which also gives Battams’ book its title. Family accounts suggest Newland followed Caroline to the Ballarat goldfields and asked her to leave her husband. It did not eventuate. Samantha undertook a cultural consultation before writing sections involving Aboriginal people. Old newspaper language was either replaced with more appropriate terminology in square brackets or, in one case involving a funeral pyre, stripped of its sensationalist framing while the story itself was kept. She also describes firsthand colonial accounts of a corroboree of 500 people on the banks of the Torrens near what is now the Paradise Bridge. The interview closes on a revelation hidden since 1890. Battams had her DNA tested to find her adopted father’s biological family, and dismissed a recurring surname, Hazelhurst, as irrelevant to her mother’s side. A later ancestry update showed 25 per cent of her DNA tracing to northwest England and Wales. Following the Hazelhurst name led to Christchurch, New Zealand, and to the conclusion that her great-grandmother Edith Thompson was already pregnant when she married, with a father other than the man recorded. The cover of Paving the Way is a photograph of Edith and Battams’ grandfather. “The true story had been kept from 1890 to 2025,” Battams says. Paving the Way is being launched at the 2026 History Festival on 15 May. Dr Lanie Anderson, a previous Adelaide Show guest (107 – Lainie Anderson: View from the hills), will launch the book. 00:27:59 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature Steve Davis & The Virtualosos‘ “river shanty” song, Away Away (The Canally Crew Song). Steve Davis wrote this original river shanty after time spent aboard the PS Marion, sister vessel to the PS Canally, a paddle steamer launched in 1907 that is now being restored at Morgan ahead of a relaunch in late May 2026. Keith Conlon puts the song in context: Morgan once had queues of paddle steamers and six freight trains a day departing with river cargo. He also produces a story about a paddle steamer loaded with materials to build a pub at Bourke that ran aground in a drought and only floated free two years later, by which point the pub had been built by other means. Away Away is one of ten original songs Steve has written about South Australia for History Hit Parade, the show he and Keith Conlon are performing at Mercury Cinema during the 2026 South Australian History Festival. Keith is confident audiences will want to sing along. A stage jig from Keith is, in his own assessment, highly in doubt. Booking details are in this link: History Hit Parade tickets and information. It’s on Monday, May 11, 11am, and Sunday, May 17, at 4pm and it will simply be an enjoyable show of historical anecdotes, fun, and music.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When 80,000 people descend on an event, somebody has made it look effortless. Wayne Taylor has spent three decades being that somebody, from the Sydney 2000 Olympics to Wimbledon, Formula One on three continents, and right here in Adelaide at the Clipsal 500. His company, First Facilities Group, now brings that same discipline to commercial and residential properties (and events) across Adelaide. There is no SA Drink of the Week this episode, but Wayne does weigh in on the relative merits of beer events versus wine events versus spirit events, and the answer is exactly what you would expect from a man who has cleaned up after all three. The Musical Pilgrimage features Steve Davis and the Virtualosos performing “Cellar Door Shuffle,” a celebration of the great South Australian wine country ritual, which also gets a preview mention for the upcoming History Hit Parade show at the Mercury Cinema. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Gather Round To Learn About Major Events 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:02:17 Wayne Taylor, First Facilities Group Right now, as Gather Round unfolds across South Australia, tens of thousands of people are doing what they always do at a footy match: finding a seat, grabbing a pie, visiting the loo, and not once thinking about any of it. That invisibility is because someone’s doing their job brilliantly. Wayne Taylor has spent the better part of three decades making sure that when 80,000 people descend on an event, the wheels don’t fall off. He’s done it at the Sydney Olympics. At Wimbledon. At Formula One races on three continents. At Clipsal 500 when 200 staff, 15 supervisors and a $300,000 budget had to deliver a spotless result across four days. And he’s done it right here in Adelaide, quietly, at events you almost certainly attended. He now runs First Facilities Group, bringing that same discipline to commercial and residential properties across Adelaide. Wayne Taylor has a habit most of us would find exhausting. Every time he walks into a building, he is quietly checking the mirrors, the bins, the general state of things. It is not fussiness. It is decades of conditioning that started when his parents cleaned Memorial Drive as a boy from Broken Hill, and he mostly just got in the way by raiding the office stationery drawers. That origin story matters because the values Wayne brings to First Facilities Group now, respect, honesty, and an obsessive eye for what others walk past, were baked in early. As he puts it, “If you can’t get your housekeeping correct, how can you then operate your business?” It is a lens that applies equally to a gleaming corporate lobby and to the pit lane at Albert Park. The stories from his career read like an event passport. At the Sydney Olympics he managed 1,100 staff, set an 80% minimum recycling target, and navigated vehicle bomb checks just to get to work each morning. At Wimbledon, he learned that a single cigarette butt on the ground was enough to earn a conversation with the CEO, and that some corporate boxes were quietly serving spirits in coffee cups because you cannot legally drink alcohol watching football in England. At Formula One, a certain unnamed driver, “Mansell,” parked his car next to the waste compactor despite clear signage, and paid for it when a bin tipped onto the vehicle. Wayne watched from the level above and, eventually, laughed. The Clipsal 500 holds a particular place in his story. He worked it for twelve years and is clear-eyed about what it meant to Adelaide after the Grand Prix left in 1995: “The place went dead.” The Clipsal helped rebuild that. His team delivered the best margin in the company that year not through corner-cutting but through relentless post-event debriefs, 4am starts, and crews walking the entire circuit in a line with headlamps, because the lighting was never quite good enough. One of the sharper insights in this conversation is about the people who do this work. Wayne keeps what he calls a little Bible, a list of standout workers from each event. The good ones get taken to lunch, thanked properly, and connected to the next opportunity, whether that is the Grand Prix in Melbourne or something interstate. It is empathetic at a human level, and it also happens to be smart: one well-led supervisor with 20 people will outperform a rabble of 50. His principles for First Facilities Group are unchanged: respect, honesty, punctuality, and a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. He once disciplined his own teenage son for repeated lateness in front of the whole crew, because anything less would have been unfair to everyone else. That is the standard he holds himself to and expects from others. 01:08:34 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature Steve Davis & The Virtualosos‘ new song, Cellar Door Shuffle. This song is a love letter to the ritual of winery visits across South Australia, from the Hills to Barossa, McLaren Vale to the Clare. Wayne is still in the room for this one, and Steve uses it to draw a neat contrast from the week’s main themes: beer events are loud, spirit events are rough, wine events are, as Wayne says, “a little more sophisticated.” The song will also feature in the History Hit Parade show with Keith Conlon at the Mercury Cinema. It’s on Monday, May 11, 11am, and Sunday, May 17, at 4pm and it will simply be an enjoyable show of historical anecdotes, fun, and music.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joe Evans was last on the show in 2018, picking grapes and talking about his craft. A lot has changed at Ballycroft Vineyard & Cellars since then. Joe has turned a $6,000-a-year electricity bill into a source of profit, using 33 kilowatts of solar, a bidirectional V2G converter, and two Nissan Leafs to run his house, his winery, and his cellar door without drawing from the grid. He believes Ballycroft is the world’s first winery to make and mature wine entirely on solar and car battery power. Photos of Joe for the show notes and the podcast player, were taken by Thomas Wielecki. There is no SA Drink of the Week this episode, though Joe does give a tantalising description of his 100% Mataro and a very limited release Small Berry Shiraz Pressings 2022 that had already sold half its 400-bottle run within a month of release. For the Musical Pilgrimage, Steve shares an original composition recorded with his virtual session band, The Virtuosos. Another Bloody Year was written just a fortnight before recording, prompted by rising fuel costs, global instability and a CS Lewis speech from 1939 that turns out to be as timely as ever. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Small Winemaker, Big Wines, Zero Power Bills 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week, but we encourage you to browse the Ballycroft Vineyard & Cellar online store. 00:04:19 Joe Evans, Ballycroft Vineyard & Cellars If you have ever stared at a power bill and felt a quiet fury, Joe Evans is the person you need to hear. Back in the late 2010s, South Australian electricity was already the most expensive in the country at around 28 cents per kilowatt hour. It is now around 58 cents, which Joe says makes South Australia second most expensive in the Western world. His response was not to complain but to act. The journey started in 2019 when Joe purchased a 40-kilowatt Nissan Leaf from a rural dealership, becoming what he believes was the first person in Australia to buy an EV from such a dealer. The car he specifically chose because it had bidirectional capability: charge it during the day, discharge it at night to power the house and winery. The catch was that the V2G converter needed to make that work took three and a half years to get Australian standards approval. Joe was the first residential and small business owner in the country to install one. Walk through a 24-hour cycle at Ballycroft Vineyard & Cellars and you begin to see how elegantly the system operates. From around 6am, the car battery powers the morning rush: kettles, hair dryers, the household waking up. Once the sun rises and the 33-kilowatt solar array kicks in, the car recharges within an hour or two while simultaneously running the house and winery. During vintage, when the fermentation chillers are working hard around the clock, Joe uses one car’s full 60-kilowatt battery per night. His figure from last year: 42 kilowatts used across 42 days of fermentation. That is one kilowatt a day, or about 58 cents. Without the system, it would have been closer to $30 a day. He is now running two Nissan Leafs, a “his and hers” arrangement after his wife fell in love with the original car. The second, a secondhand 2021 60-kilowatt model purchased for $36,000, he describes as a generator on wheels. He bought it primarily for the battery. A 50% government rebate later led him to add a home battery as well, though the cars still do the heavy lifting. For listeners weighing up an EV, Joe offers practical advice grounded in four years of real-world use: keep the battery between 20% and 80%, never leave it at 100%, and prioritise V2G capability when choosing a car. He notes that Tesla has explicitly ruled out V2G to protect its wall battery sales, while many newer European and Chinese models are building it in. A new Wallbox Quasar 2 with CCS2 compatibility is expected to arrive at around $5,000, down from the $10,000 Joe paid. The conversation also covers range anxiety (real but shrinking as infrastructure grows), tyre and brake wear (largely a non-issue in his experience), battery degradation (his six-year-old car has less degradation than comparable models that only drove, because running the house draws power far more gently than driving does), and what to do when the power goes out. Joe’s answer to that last one: nothing, because the system keeps running regardless. “Have control of your own energy. It’s a good feeling.” – Joe Evans 00:59:58 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature Steve Davis & The Virtualosos’ new song, Another Bloody Year. Steve frames this segment with a reference to John Schumann being told to stay in his lane after posting about Australian involvement in potential conflict, and responds with CS Lewis’s 1939 speech to Oxford students on the eve of the Second World War: “Life has never been normal.” Against that backdrop, Steve shares an original song written a fortnight before recording, reflecting on the cost ordinary people pay when leaders make reckless decisions. The final verse lands with quiet force, borrowing a line from Schumacher: “All of us should live more simply so that others might simply live.” If there is a singer looking for material with genuine weight, Steve has flagged this one as available.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

US President Donald Trump handed crypto companies a huge win last year when he signed a piece of legislation to regulate an important part of the digital currency world: stablecoins. But ever since then, Wall Street banks have been fighting to change parts of the law. The FT's digital markets correspondent Nikou Asgari explains what's provoked US banks and who might have the upper hand in this conflict.Clips from Bank of America, CBS News, CNBC, CNN, Forbes, Fox 5 Atlanta, JPMorgan Chase, The White HouseThe FT does not use generative AI to voice its podcasts.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - For further reading:The stablecoin war: Wall Street vs crypto over the future of moneyBitcoin and crypto stocks surge amid relief rally for risky assetsGlobal crypto assets hit $4tn as industry wins backing of US lawmakers- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Vote for us!Behind the Money has been nominated for an NYC Podcast Award in the Best Interview Podcast category. It's an Audience Choice award, which means we need your help to win. Vote for us here. We appreciate your support!- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Follow Nikou Asgari on X (@nikasgari), or on Bluesky (@nikasgari.bsky.social). Michela Tindera is on X (@mtindera07) and Bluesky (@mtindera.ft.com), or follow her on LinkedIn for updates about the show and more.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Behind the Money has been nominated for an NYC Podcast Award in the Best Interview Podcast category. It's an Audience Choice award, which means we need your help to win. Vote for us here. And while you're at it, vote for some other FT podcasts that have also been nominated. Our Tech Tonic podcast was nominated for Best Science & Tech Podcast. And our Swamp Notes podcast was nominated for Best News, Politics & Public Service Podcast. We appreciate your support! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In Kadina, the commercial heart of South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, farming families have been trusting the same lawyers with their most important moments for generations. This episode brings two of those lawyers to the table: Doug Reed, who has practised in Kadina for 50 years and is preparing to retire, and Kylie Mildwaters, who grew up on a nearby farm, left for Adelaide to study law, and came back to build her own thriving practice. Between them, they offer an unusually honest portrait of what country law actually looks like: the trust earned slowly, the gossip that spreads fast, and the quiet privilege of knowing the grandchildren of your very first clients. There is no SA Drink of the Week this episode The Musical Pilgrimage this week is perfectly timed: Adelaide artist My Chérie releases her new single Stuck Inside My Head today, the same day she performs at WOMADelaide. It is an indie folk-rock meditation on neurodivergence and the challenge of quieting a restless mind, and it could not be a more fitting soundtrack for a week when this city is buzzing with live music and big ideas. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Kadina Lawyers And The Real World Of Rural Law 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:03:01 Doug Reed and Kylie Mildwaters Kadina in the 1970s, as Doug Reed (Germein Reed) remembers it, was a proper provincial town: half its current size, built around farming, animated by fierce rivalry between Kadina, Moonta, and Wallaroo, and populated on Fridays by farmers’ wives dressed to the nines for their weekly shopping. Small Woolworths. No McDonald’s. Three pubs per town, and a pub meal was a night out. The frictions, factions, and fictions of small-town life, as Steve puts it, drawing on a line from The Carpathians, were very much in evidence, including, as Doug notes with some amusement, two rival Methodist churches in Kadina alone. Kylie Mildwaters (Mildwaters Byrth Lawyers & Conveyancers) grew up on the other side of that rivalry, as a Moonta girl who had nothing to do with Kadina. The inter-town competition, she and Doug agree, has mellowed considerably since council amalgamation, though not, they hasten to add, on the sporting field. The footy rivalry remains entirely intact. It is when the conversation turns to trust that the episode finds its real heart. Doug is direct: you cannot advertise trust. You earn it through your work, your community involvement, and your reputation, and when you make a misstep in a town this size, it spreads like wildfire. Kylie’s version of the same lesson is more pragmatic: word of mouth on the Yorke Peninsula is the best advertising you could possibly have, which means looking after every client, every time, without exception. Her additional piece of hard-won wisdom for any country lawyer? Do your Woolworths shopping online. Doug reflects on one of the quieter privileges of rural legal practice: the moment you realise you are sitting across the desk from the grandchild of a client you first helped decades ago. He calls it a privilege, and it is hard to disagree. That kind of continuity is particularly characteristic of rural practice. The corporate memory you carry about a family, built across generations, is something a city firm simply cannot replicate. It is also a responsibility, and one reason why Doug’s decision to transition the bulk of his client base to Kylie’s firm, Mildwaters Birth Lawyers, has clearly not been taken lightly. The conversation takes a sharper turn when farm succession enters the picture. The number of farming families on the Yorke Peninsula, one of Australia’s premier cropping regions, is now a fraction of what it was when Doug first arrived. Farms have grown dramatically, consuming neighbouring holdings, and with that growth has come a corresponding rise in what is at stake when a family asks who gets what. Kylie, who practises in estate and family law as well as holding membership of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP), paints a vivid picture of the legal tensions this creates: promises made about farm transfers, falling-outs between parents and children, and the litigation that follows. The old assumption that the farming son gets the farm and off-farm assets go to everyone else is, she notes, increasingly being questioned.Doug raises another pressure on modern legal practice: the Google-armed client. He recalls a family arriving having looked up the rule against perpetuities the night before. A little knowledge, he observes drily, can be a dangerous thing. Kylie adds that this is precisely why careful, unhurried thinking remains essential, a lesson Doug drummed into her when she first started, back when her instinct was to get everything done as quickly as possible. The episode closes with one of its most enjoyable exchanges: Steve asks about fictional lawyers. Doug nominates Perry Mason and, with considerably more warmth, Dennis Denuto from The Castle, a man whose grasp of the law was limited but whose faith in the vibe of it was unshakeable. Kylie, more practically, notes that films have given clients thoroughly incorrect expectations about everything from courtroom procedure to the formal reading of the will (there is no such legal requirement) to the idea that marriage automatically entitles each party to half of everything. As for Steve’s elaborate video will, he has just learned it will never be shown. He is very sorry to hear it. Here are links to a few of Kylie’s blog posts about farm succession, referenced in the discussion: Kangaroo Island: What a Movie About Two Sisters Can Teach You About Estate Planning What Troy Cassar-Daley’s ‘Family Farm’ Teaches About Succession Planning On Yorke Peninsula Why the Most Well-Intentioned Promise About Your Will Might Not Help Your Children 00:38:09 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature My Chérie‘s new song, released today, Stuck Inside My Head. Adelaide is buzzing this week. WOMADelaide is upon us, and right in the thick of it is local artist My Chérie, whose brand new single Stuck Inside My Head drops today. Written and performed entirely by My Chérie, with additional production, mixing, and mastering by Mario Spate, it is an indie folk-rock meditation on neurodivergence, spiritual longing, and the very human challenge of quieting a restless mind. My Chérie has described wanting the production to feel like summoning an inner power: a moment of connection with something bigger, almost like nature answering back. For fans of Soccer Mommy, Samia, and Wolf Alice, and for anyone who has ever lain awake with their thoughts looping at full volume, this one will feel like a hand on the shoulder.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The white marquees are not going up in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden this year. Adelaide Writers’ Week, a festival that has graced this city since 1960, was cancelled following a sequence of events set in motion by a disinvitation that drew international condemnation, triggered the resignation of director Louise Adler and nearly the entire board, and ultimately prompted an unreserved apology from a newly constituted board. Community alternatives, including Constellations at the Adelaide Town Hall, have stepped forward to keep the spirit of the festival alive. The Adelaide Show is doing the same, in its own way. There is no SA Drink of the Week in this episode. The Musical Pilgrimage closes the episode with an original composition, “Uncomfortable Ideas,” written by Steve Davis and performed by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos. More than a few people have suggested it deserves to be the unofficial anthem of this year’s festival. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Adelaide Writers’ Week in Absentia 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:06:25 Adelaide Writers’ Week In Absentia Steve Davis opens by acknowledging the cancellation of Adelaide Writers’ Week and the circumstances behind it, without dwelling on controversy for its own sake. The spirit of the festival, he argues, cannot be legislated out of existence, and The Adelaide Show is here to prove it. Before the archive episodes begin, Steve offers a handful of literary touchstones. Patrick White observed that writing a novel is like an illness from which one is trying to recover, and that the artist’s role is to make sense of a world becoming increasingly nonsensical. Clive James described great books as voices that speak across the centuries, telling you that you are not alone. Vonnegut reminded us that we must be careful about what we pretend to be, and that reading leads to a life more grand, more empathetic, more civilised. And Douglas Adams, who loved deadlines for the whooshing noise they make as they go by, gives us a fitting frame for a festival that simply did not happen. Two archive episodes follow, chosen for what they reveal about the real work of writing and the underappreciated world of genre fiction. Segment One: Writing, Publishing, and Resetting Expectations, Episode 308The pandemic was supposed to be the great gift to aspiring novelists. Time, solitude, and the vague sense that history was being made. What actually happened, for most people, was considerably less cinematic. In this 2020 recording, four people who know the industry from the inside cut through the life-coach optimism that surrounded the period. Authors Jane Ainslie and Michelle Prak bring the writing perspective. Publishers Michael Bollen of Wakefield Press and Rommie Corso of Hardshell Publishing bring the business view. Together they create an unusually candid picture of what it actually takes to turn a manuscript into a book that someone buys. The moment that sets the tone comes early. Jane Ainslie addresses the idea that everyone has a book inside them with the sort of directness that suggests she has been asked this at a lot of dinner parties: not every story the world has inside it is a story the world is waiting to read. Michelle Prak, who has put herself through five, six, sometimes seven drafts before a manuscript goes anywhere near an editor, adds that writing is a deeply enjoyable, deeply expensive hobby that tends to crowd out a great deal of everything else. Michael Bollen introduces a concept that most aspiring authors have not quite faced: a book’s shelf life, for literary fiction, sits somewhere between milk and yoga. He describes the editorial process as a dance, with the editor standing in for the general reader, keeping an ego-free eye on whether the character who died on page seven has somehow reappeared at the party on page 86. Rommie Corso explains that self-published authors often resist the very commercial adjustments that would help their books find readers, wanting independence and viability at the same time. These do not always coexist. There is a fine moment around the ethics of drawing real people into fiction. Michelle Prak describes her novel Goodbye Newsroom, set against the backdrop of shrinking newsrooms, as inspired by rather than transcribed from real events. Jane Ainslie explains that fictionalising her nursing experiences allowed her to treat them with more dignity than a straight memoir would permit. Steve raises the precedent of a Wakefield Press novel about South Australian politics whose characters bore a striking resemblance to identifiable figures (that was a reference to The novel you’re thinking of is Never A True Word by Michael McGuire, a former journalist and long‑time political writer for The Australian and The Advertiser – his interview was in episode 198). Michael Bollen confirms, diplomatically, that some adjustments were made. Segment Two: The Art and Heart of Romance, Episode 111The candles are on the table. There is a fire going. The Scenic Hotel has given this conversation a room of its own, and three romance authors have settled in to make a serious case for a genre that represents the largest slice of fiction sales on the planet, and which continues to be treated by the literary world as something slightly embarrassing. Trish Morey, Victoria Purman, and Bronwyn Stuart are completely clear-eyed about what they do and why it matters. Romance, Trish explains, is not a “whodunit” but a “howdunit.” You know who ends up together. The pleasure is in the journey, and in not being able to work out how on earth these two people are going to find their way through all the obstacles between them. Victoria adds that romance readers were among the earliest adopters of digital books, and that the genre has long sustained a community of writers who support one another in ways other literary communities have not managed to replicate. The conversation turns, as it always does in the best episodes, on a moment of genuine revelation. Victoria puts it plainly: the deepest appeal of romance fiction is that the heroine is truly seen by the hero. Trish confirms it. Steve, in what he describes as his second light bulb moment of the evening, sits with this for a beat before acknowledging that this is not a small thing. Steve is also pressed into service reading from one of the novels in the voice of a cowboy hero. He brings considerable commitment to the performance. The authors’ response is warm, specific, and entirely at his expense. The episode closes with the “Is It News?” quiz, hosted by Nigel Dobson, which draws on historical romance headlines from 1923 South Australia and, against all odds, confirms that the real thing was considerably more scandalous than anything currently on the romance shelf. 02:15:32 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature Uncomfortable Ideas (The Adelaide Writers’ Week Song) by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos. Writers’ festivals exist, at their best, to put uncomfortable ideas into a room and let people sit with them. Adelaide Writers’ Week found itself this year at the centre of a very public argument about whether that is still something institutions are willing to do. The festival has been here before. Germaine Greer being Germaine Greer. The exposure of fabricated Holocaust revisionism behind the Helen Demidenko affair. Patrick White in 1986 urging writers to ignore critics if they wanted to avoid producing work that was safe and uninspiring and pleasing to nobody. Writers’ festivals are unsettling because they surface ideas people would often prefer to leave alone. They are necessary because a society that cannot examine uncomfortable thinking out loud gradually loses the capacity to protect itself from thinking that goes unexamined. “Uncomfortable Ideas” was written by Steve Davis to speak directly to that tension. It addresses the short-sightedness of those who believe audiences need to be shielded from difficult thoughts, and it takes seriously Patrick White’s case for artistic courage that does not stop to ask permission. Listen for the bridge, which captures the specific feeling of an invitation to speak in the open air being overshadowed by voices that underestimated what a well-read audience is capable of holding.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After 25+ years of reviewing Adelaide Fringe shows, Steve takes a sabbatical this year. But there’s one show he can’t help spotlighting: Rob Newman’s debut solo performance “Don’t Die Wondering”. Newman’s story offers something rare, a comedian willing to be deeply reflective about the journey that brought him to the stage at 60, shaped by a decade of hospitals and life-or-death moments. This episode contains no SA Drink of the Week segment. The Musical Pilgrimage features Steve’s own song about the Adelaide Fringe. Through “Centre Stage”, performed by Steve Davis and The Virtuosos, he offers a bittersweet love letter to a festival he’s watched change over decades. The segment includes his conversation with FiveAA’s Richard Pascoe about reviewing standards, five-star review inflation, and why the Fringe remains a jewel in South Australia’s crown. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: This Adelaide Fringe Don’t Die Wondering 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:03:17 Rob Newman Rob Newman appears on screen in full purple surgical scrubs against a hospital backdrop. It’s not a gimmick. Over the past decade, he’s spent considerable time in hospitals and operating theatres, told more than once to gather his family and say goodbye. These experiences form the bedrock of Don’t Die Wondering. The path to standup wasn’t part of Newman’s original plan. He traces it back to a coffee conversation with Steve 10 to 12 years ago. “Your suggestion at the time was, come and try standup,” Newman recalls. “It’s a great way to get the confidence to do public speaking.” What began as preparation for property market speaking tours became something much deeper. Steve shares his own early standup experience, driving across Adelaide to work with Glynn Nicholas, heart palpitating so strongly he could feel his pulse under his eyebrows. Newman agrees about the terror, offering perhaps the most vivid description of pre-show nerves: “It’s the best cure for constipation you’ll ever get in your life.” But the terror serves a purpose. Newman describes managing the fear of judgment. “Not so much to lose it, but control it in the sense of embracing the fear of it,” he explains. That fear never entirely disappears. What changes is the ability to handle surprises, to relax into improvisation, to step away from verbatim scripts. The conversation explores performing as yourself versus hiding behind characters. Steve admits he gravitated toward characters partly because “anything negative feedback that might happen is water off a duck’s back. In some ways it’s the cheat’s way out.” Newman has stuck with vulnerability. “Be yourself,” he says. “Basically unzip yourself and be vulnerable.” Steve’s immediate response: “What’s your show rated?” Newman confirms it’s R-rated, though the rating speaks more to emotional honesty than shock value. Newman’s been running around Adelaide dressed as a surgeon, offering free medical checks as promotion for the show. It’s playful promotion, but also a way of inhabiting the hospital world that shaped his perspective. Newman’s journey through the comedy ranks has been patient and methodical. Starting in his early fifties, he’s spent years developing his craft before attempting a solo Fringe show at 60. The title “Don’t Die Wondering” carries weight when spoken by someone who’s genuinely faced that possibility. Rob Newman was a grant recipient through the Adelaide Fringe Foundation. 00:38:30 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature Centre Stage (The Adelaide Fringe Song) by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos. After 25+ years of reviewing Adelaide Fringe shows, often two to three per night, Steve presents his own song about the festival. “Centre Stage” is what he describes as “still a love song to the Fringe and just a cheeky fringe type, steampunk, gothic reflection on the state of play.” The lyrics trace the festival’s shift from experimental counterculture to celebrity-driven programming: “You were fringe to me / You did not need celebrities / But now a household name comes and cash in on fame / And crowds out smaller shows that have more soul.” His reviewing experience infuses the verses, cataloguing years spent in theatres, on blankets in parks, and sweltering in church halls without air vents, always writing reviews “to help all thinking people choose emerging art in our town.” The conversation with FiveAA’s Richard Pascoe addresses reviewing standards and the proliferation of five-star reviews. “There are some reviewers who are promised critics, et cetera, but there’s a lot of light dusting out there,” Steve observes. “They have become cheapened, like the money in Argentina during their inflation.” Steve’s reviewing philosophy was always accountability: “I had to write them knowing that you would go and buy a ticket and you need to be able to look me in the eye and say, yep, that was accurate.” Despite his criticisms of how the Fringe has changed, Steve’s message remains clear: attend the Fringe, take chances on weird and experimental shows, support artists attempting something genuinely different. “Enjoy the Fringe. We should, no matter how we do it. It’s an absolute jewel in our crown.”Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As the March 21st, 2026 South Australian state election approaches, the Malinauskas Labor government maintains polling numbers that would make most incumbents envious. Yet beneath this apparent stability, questions linger about whether today’s ALP still embodies the values of the workers’ movement from which it emerged, or whether it has become something else entirely. ** The image features Gemini's best effort of imagining Steve Davis and Robert Godden as modern day Don Dunstans. This episode features no SA Drink of the Week, a decision that tips its hat to both Robert Godden’s teetotalling preferences and to King O’Malley, the flamboyant insurance salesman who permanently removed the ‘u’ from ‘Labor’ while dodging questions about his own birthplace. The Musical Pilgrimage presents Australia Day by Steve Davis and The Virtualosos, a song that addresses social cohesion and community connection in contemporary Australia, themes that connect directly to the political fragmentation discussed throughout the episode. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Is The ALP Guaranteed Victory In The 2026 South Australian Election?00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:02:37 Robert GoddenThe Adelaide Show: Special Briefing — The Labor Machine This conversation serves as the companion piece to episode 423’s examination of the South Australian Liberal Party. Where that episode explored the Liberal Party’s challenges, this discussion has our political commentator, Robert Godden, apply the same analytical rigour to the South Australia Labor Party‘s position heading into the 2026 state election. The conversation begins with King O’Malley, that peculiar figure in Australian political history who was, in Robert’s memorable description, “50% staunch Australian politician, 50% carnival worker.” O’Malley’s legacy includes both Canberra and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, institutions that prompted Robert to reflect: “Most of us Australians can just give thanks to the days, you know, before you go to bed, you think, I’m glad I live in a country that has a bank with an appalling logo and a capital city in the middle of nowhere.” The historical roots of the labour movement trace back to the Industrial Revolution, when workers were, as Robert puts it, “really the AI of the day, you know, come and get this. It’s cheap, it’ll do your work for you and you’ll make a huge profit.” This parallel between 19th century industrialisation and contemporary technological disruption threads through the conversation, particularly when Robert shares the story of a logistics company owner whose business is failing because “the work he used to do in working stuff out for people is now done by AI.” The discussion explores how guilds differed from unions, with Robert explaining that guilds “were designed to move their members toward the ruling class. They weren’t, guilds didn’t really exist to lift all boats. They were a highly specific rising tide.” This distinction becomes relevant when examining modern Labor’s approach to worker representation. Robert traces the evolution of Australian labor politics from its foundation in the shearers’ strikes of the 1890s through to contemporary challenges. The ALP emerged as the world’s first labour party to form government, a fact that speaks to Australia’s democratic traditions. Yet the party has undergone significant transformation, moving from representing primarily blue-collar workers to a broader base that includes professional and service sector employees. The conversation examines whether modern Labor still serves its founding principles or has become absorbed into the political establishment it once challenged. Robert notes the irony that many Labor MPs now come from professional backgrounds rather than the shop floor, raising questions about whether they truly understand the working-class experience they claim to represent. On the Malinauskas government specifically, the analysis reveals a pragmatic administration that has maintained stability during challenging economic conditions. However, Robert questions whether this stability comes at the cost of bold vision. “Is it enough to simply manage well, or should a labor government be pushing for more substantial change?” he asks. The discussion touches on the tensions within modern Labor between traditional unionised workers and newer constituencies, between economic management and social justice, between South Australian interests and national party directions. Robert suggests that while Malinauskas has successfully navigated these tensions so far, the test will come when difficult choices force the government to reveal which interests truly take priority. When examining Labor’s electoral prospects for 2026, Robert notes the Liberals’ current disarray creates favourable conditions, but warns against complacency. “Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them,” he observes. The question becomes whether Labor can maintain discipline and avoid the kinds of missteps that have undone seemingly secure governments in the past. The conversation concludes with broader reflections on the state of South Australian politics. Robert suggests that both major parties face a fundamental challenge: reconnecting with an electorate that increasingly feels disconnected from traditional political structures. This alienation creates opportunities for minor parties and independents to claim territory that major parties once dominated. Throughout the discussion, the historical parallels between past industrial disruption and contemporary technological change illuminate present challenges. Just as workers in the 1800s faced displacement by machinery, today’s workforce confronts automation and artificial intelligence. The question of how a modern Labor party responds to these challenges reveals much about whether it remains true to its founding mission of protecting workers’ interests. 01:24:41 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature Australia Day by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos. The Musical Pilgrimage connects directly to the episode’s themes of social cohesion and political fragmentation. Steve introduces his original composition “Australia Day” by reflecting on how disconnection fuels the rise of fringe political movements. The song addresses the transformation of Australian community life, opening with the observation that “The Australia which I was born had lots of backyards and lots of lawn, and we knew our neighbours down the street.” This nostalgia isn’t mere sentimentality but recognition of something lost: the neighbourhood connections that once helped integrate newcomers and build social cohesion. Steve explains how two factors exacerbate contemporary division. First, physical disconnection: “My dad used to know everyone in our neighbourhood, and therefore we did too. Now most of us hardly know anybody. We’ve got our houses closed off.” Second, algorithmic isolation: “The communication we do have externally is very filtered. Algorithm-focused content that feeds more of what the big American corporations like Meta and Google think is going to pander to our vulnerabilities.” Drawing on his own experience living in Hungary, Steve reflects on the immigrant perspective: “When you’ve moved somewhere new… you look for compatriots to connect with, so you’ve got something to hold onto.” This understanding shapes the song’s call for empathy and connection rather than fear and division. The song’s chorus captures the core message: “Who’s here is here now let’s make it work. It starts with learning. We share this dirt, we share the same song, we share the flies, and there’s a vibe here beneath our skies. Just tone it down, be laid back, bend a little, and cut some slack.” Steve positions the song as a counterpoint to political and social fragmentation, a reminder of Australian values that have, imperfectly but meaningfully, helped diverse groups find common ground. “Part of that is not blowing a fuse at the smallest thing. It’s actually calming the farm and being a little bit laid back, holding things a little bit loosely, drawing a line in the sand when it needs to happen, but not making that a knee-jerk reaction.” The song is available on all streaming platforms, and Steve extends an invitation to performers who might want to bring their own interpretation to the material.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this first episode of our sixth season. Hot on the heels of our shortlisting as Best Interview Podcast at the prestigious British podcast awards, the team are back with the global queer group chat.Today Graeme Smth is joined by regular Topher Taylor and fellow queer Irishman in London Charles Moriarty. The theme is our memories of Amy Winehouse, the queer icon and British music icon, taken too young.Charles was the photographer who took the images of Amy that launched the image we remember today for the album "Frank" with the iconic Bee Hive getting its first outing on a photo shoot in New York with some of the images displayed at The National Portrait Gallery in London.Topher talks of the time he was saved from homophobic abuse at a bar in Soho back in the late 00's by non other than Amy.Please leave a rating and comment on this show to help spread the word---THIS IS OUTCAST WORLD ---Like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and please leave a review. This helps us become easier to discover. Please take time to rate the show and if you're enjoying the podcast then take time to comment about it wherever you listen. //////// Check us on Insta, and TikTok @thisisoutcastworld ///// Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When a South Australian theatre company that began with The Tragical Life of Cheese Boy – performed more than 800 times worldwide – prepares to take its final bow, it doesn’t fade quietly. Instead, Slingsby is staging its most expensive and ambitious production yet: A Concise Compendium of Wonder, a triptych of three interconnected shows housed in a custom-built structure in the Botanic Gardens during the Adelaide Festival.In this episode, we settle into Slingsby’s Hall of Possibility in Parkside with artistic director and CEO Andy Packer for a wide-ranging conversation that explores the company’s distinctive aesthetic, their commitment to treating young audiences with intellectual honesty, and why nostalgia creates the perfect emotional space for processing difficult truths. In the South Australian Drink Of The Week, we taste the company’s signature Hall of Possibility Tea – a bespoke blend featuring licorice root, organic lavender, red rose petals, spearmint and peppermint that Andy describes as both “invigorating and calming. “The musical pilgrimage features the Slingsby Ensemble performing “Song for the Adolescent Seal” from their 2018 Adelaide Cabaret Festival show Songs for Those Who’ve Come Across the Seas – a piece Andy realised he’d forgotten to mention during our conversation, despite being extremely proud of it. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: A Slingsby Life Of Wonder With Andy Packer 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:03:12 SA Drink Of The Week The SA Drink Of The Week this week is Brewed by Belinda Hall of Possibilitea. Belinda Hill of Brewed by Belinda created this bespoke blend specifically for Slingsby, capturing both the company’s aesthetic and the practical needs of artists in creative process. The brief: create something both invigorating and calming. The blend looks almost theatrical. Organic lavender, red rose petals, organic blue cornflower petals creating visual layers in the pot. Licorice root provides the grounding bass note, with spearmint and peppermint lifting everything. There’s aniseed hiding in there too.Andy explains the tea’s role in Slingsby’s creative practice. During those inevitable moments developing new work when “you get very lost,” the tea provides structured pause. “People go off and do different things and I’ll have a cup of tea and I might go outside for a little while. Usually you find the solution.” What’s crucial is that Hall of Possibility Tea won’t get bitter or overly steeped. “There’s no black tea leaf or anything like that. It just gets better.” Andy keeps a flask throughout rehearsal days, taking sips during fifteen-minute breaks. As we taste, the experience unfolds in layers. Initially, the mint notes dominate. Then the aniseed emerges from backstage, as Andy puts it, “ready for you, it knew you were coming, it was just waiting in the wings.” By the end of our tasting, all the subtle players have made their entrance. No single flavour dominates. They’re holding hands across the palate like a well-mannered audience at a Slingsby show. Slingsby has been gifting this tea to presenting partners around the world since 2019. After performances overseas, small tins of Hall of Possibility Tea remain behind, tangible tokens of the connections Slingsby creates between communities. 00:13:08 Andy Packer Andy Packer describes A Concise Compendium of Wonder as “the perfect bookend” to Slingsby Theatre Company’s twenty-year journey. We’re sitting in the Hall of Possibility in Parkside, where families have gathered to experience work that never softened darkness for young audiences, never offered easy answers. In a few weeks, after the final curtain falls on this ambitious triptych at the Adelaide Festival, Slingsby will cease creating new work. The company that began with The Tragical Life of Cheeseboy, performed more than 800 times worldwide, closes with its most expensive, most ambitious production yet. In this interview, you’ll discover: The origins trace back to amateur theatre at La Mama in the late eighties, where Packer learnt that being involved in every aspect wasn’t just practical necessity but essential training. “You are crafting an experience for an audience, not just there for your ego to be on stage, but actually to prepare the space to welcome people into the church that theater can be.” The crystallising moment arrived in Montreal in 2005, watching Danish company Group 38 perform The Little Match Girl. Packer sat in the audience afterwards and wept for fifteen minutes, unable to move. That company’s aesthetic showed him precisely what he wanted to create. Slingsby’s first expenditure as a company was flying their entire creative team to Hobart to see Group 38 perform again, establishing that benchmark from day one. The distinctive Slingsby voice, that curious blend of the new and familiar, serves a specific purpose. “When you create a nostalgic space, it’s like you’ve gone on a holiday back in time,” Packer explains. “You let your guard down and that allows you to attend to the deep concern, the deep anxiety that sits deeper.” Slingsby productions have never shied from exploring loss, loneliness, domestic violence and grief. “We can’t protect our audience, we can’t protect children. We have to prepare them.” But preparation doesn’t mean pessimism. Every show ends with hope. The conversation hopscotches through key productions: The Tragical Life of Cheese Boy (800+ performances) Man Covets Bird (where a boy’s parents no longer recognise him) Ode to Nonsense (a full opera celebrating Edward Lear) The Young King (Oscar Wilde’s fable about capitalism performed without softening) Emil and the Detectives (capturing post-war reconstruction with audiences building cardboard cities) The Boy Who Talked to Dogs (an Irish-Australian collaboration about surviving domestic violence) The final chapter confronts climate reality. Measuring carbon use revealed that flying sets internationally consumed vastly more carbon than shipping by sea or road transport. “We can’t be flying sets around anymore. We wanna make the world a better place, but we wanna do it now in a way that reduces our impact on the climate.” The solution: A Concise Compendium of Wonder. Three shows, Hansel and Gretel, The Selfish Giant, and The Little Match Girl, performed by one cast on one regeneratively designed wooden building that can be disassembled and reused. The Wandering Hall of Possibility features 17 speakers, 5,500 pixels built into walls, seating that reconfigures for each show, all touring by road only. The three fairytales trace a journey from medieval times to 3099 on a lunar colony. At the centre of each story sits a tree or forest, moving from living as part of the forest, to fighting for access to a single Moreton Bay fig, to finding the last tree on the moon whilst Earth re-greens in humanity’s absence. For Adelaide audiences, the Wandering Hall sits on Plane Tree Lawn in the Botanic Gardens. This is both thank you season and goodbye. Audiences can experience one show or commit to the full “sling cycle” across one day. “I think it is the most important thing happening in the universe right now,” Packer says about the intent behind every Slingsby show. “We want this for the people that have bothered to come and be with us.” 01:07:07 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage, we feature a piece from the Slingsby show that Andy Packer forgot to mention during our conversation, an oversight that left him “racked with angst.” Songs for Those Who’ve Come Across the Seas premiered at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2018 and was subsequently invited for a three-week season at the New Victory Theater in New York and a festival in Atlanta. COVID prevented those tours. “Sometimes even the big fish get away,” Andy philosophically notes. The Slingsby Ensemble perform Song for the Adolescent Seal with the distinctive musicality that characterises Quincy Grant’s compositions, spare and emotionally direct. The piece explores the necessary letting go that allows children to grow into their full selves. There’s additional resonance hearing this now, as Slingsby itself prepares to let go. The song’s metaphor of adolescent seals venturing beyond safe shores speaks to trusting that what you’ve nurtured will survive and flourish independently.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Indian cricket fans unleash fury on Twitter about disputed LBW calls, host Steve Davis fields the abuse meant for someone else. This episode brings together both Steve Davises for the first time. The retired umpire who stood in 57 Test matches shares what it’s like to make split-second decisions in front of millions, survive a terrorist attack in Lahore, and maintain composure when Shane Warne announces his next delivery to the batter. The SA Drink of the Week features Ballycroft Vineyard and Cellars’ 2024 Small Berry Montepulciano from Langhorne Creek, tasted and endorsed by both Steve Davises. The wine presents an intriguing contradiction, its dark appearance suggesting heavy Barossa Shiraz, yet delivering a lighter, fruit-forward palette that Joe Evans recommends chilling for summer enjoyment. The Musical Pilgrimage features Steve Davis and the Virtualosos with “From the Cathedral to the City End,” weaving together Test cricket, Adelaide Oval, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer into a meditation on how this game brings us together. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Steve Davis Talks Cricket With Former Umpire Steve Davis 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:01:50 SA Drink Of The Week The SA Drink Of The Week this week is a 2024 Ballycroft Montepelciano. Joe Evans of Ballycroft Vineyard and Cellars made an unexpected connection five weeks before this recording. During a Barossa wine tour for friends visiting from England, Steve Davis the umpire introduced himself at the cellar door. Joe mentioned knowing another Steve Davis from Adelaide, someone involved in cricket. The dots joined. Both Steve Davises then converged on this episode, linked by Langhorne Creek grapes and the patron saint of Adelaide. The 2024 Small Berry Montepulciano arrives in the glass looking deceptively heavy. Its dark colour suggests bold Barossa Shiraz, thick and commanding. Yet the first sip tells a different story. Light fruit dances on the palette, a brightness unexpected from that brooding appearance. Joe recommends chilling it slightly and serving through summer, perfect with Italian or Mexican food. Steve the umpire remembers that 10:30am Sunday morning tasting at Ballycroft. When Joe poured this wine, Steve thought immediately of Barossa Shiraz. That’s his drink. But then came the taste, revealing something gentler yet structured. The wine builds as it sits on the palette, gaining weight and presence. Like a pitch heading into day three or four, settling into its rhythm rather than losing life. The conversation meanders through wine, travel and cuisine. West Indies food has never won Steve’s heart, so more of this Montepulciano would help those meals considerably. Host Steve notes how the wine shifts from what seems like a marriage between Pinot Noir and rosé to something with genuine body and staying power. It’s not Pinot weight, not Grenache or Merlot either. The complexity reveals itself slowly, rewarding patience. The 2024 Small Berry Montepulciano from Ballycroft Vineyard and Cellars, endorsed by two Steve Davises, stands as this week’s South Australian drink. 00:10:25 Steve Davis and Steve Davis INTRODUCTION:So, I need to come clean about something. For years on Twitter, I’ve been fielding abuse meant for someone else. Indian cricket fans would see “Steve Davis” and unleash fury about a disputed LBW or a missed edge – and when I’d reply, mortified apologies would flood in. They’d meant the *other* Steve Davis. The one who stood in 57 Test matches, 137 ODIs, survived a terrorist attack in Lahore, and spent 25 years making split-second decisions in front of millions. Today, finally, I get to meet the bloke whose honour I’ve been accidentally defending. Steve Davis, welcome to The Adelaide Show. NOTES: The conversation begins with a revelation. Far from being retired, Steve Davis the umpire spends twelve months a year refereeing cricket across two continents. Every six months he travels to England for County Cricket, returning to Australia for Sheffield Shield and Big Bash matches. When he thought retirement from umpiring might leave him lost, the England and Wales Cricket Board offered him a lifeline that turned into a globe-trotting vocation. His cricket origins trace back to Elizabeth, newly formed with perhaps eight houses when his parents arrived as ten-pound Poms. His father Dave Davis played for WRE Cricket Club alongside John Scarce, whose son Kevin Scarce kept wicket for Steve at Elizabeth High School and later became Governor of South Australia. Cricket in Adelaide was woven through family, friendship and those Saturday afternoons where you’d stand in as a sub fielder, watching your father’s team and falling deeper into the game’s rhythm. The path to international umpiring began humbly in D Grade after finishing his playing career at West Torrens. Within two seasons he’d progressed to A Grade, and by November 1990 he was officiating his first Sheffield Shield match. His debut came partly through circumstance rather than genius. When Tony Crafter retired to become Australia’s first full-time umpire manager, a vacancy opened among South Australia’s two eligible international umpires. Steve joined Darryl Harper in that select group. On 12 December 1992, exactly 33 years ago yesterday, he walked onto Adelaide Oval for his first One Day International. Pakistan versus West Indies. His home ground, but the nerves were overwhelming. Terry Prue, his Western Australian colleague, radioed from square leg to report that Richie Richardson had noticed Steve missing all of Wasim Akram’s no balls. In his nervousness, he’d forgotten to look down at the front foot. When he finally started calling them, Wasim’s response was gentlemanly: “Oh, come on, we’re all friends out here. Give me a bit of warning.”The umpire’s process demands intense concentration. First, watch the front foot land. The moment it’s safe, eyes shoot straight to the bottom of the stumps, letting the ball come into view. As soon as the ball dies, switch off briefly, then begin again. Steve ran his counter one ball ahead, clicking after each delivery so the number five meant two balls remaining. This meant no clicking back for no balls, just not clicking forward. Tim May once stopped mid-delivery and demanded Steve stop clicking his counter during the run-up. His Ashes Test debut at Adelaide Oval in 1997, just his second Test match, stands as one of his finest days. He got every decision right on a 44-degree day when England lost the toss and their bowlers were bowling one-over spells in the heat. Steve Bucknor, his partner that day, also had a flawless match. Alex Stewart still calls him “legend” when they meet at English grounds. The Decision Review System arrived while Steve was umpiring, transforming the role completely. Some umpires, like Mark Benson, couldn’t handle seeing their decisions overturned repeatedly. Benson flew home after two days of a Test match in Australia and never returned to international cricket. Steve embraced DRS immediately. His philosophy was simple: we’re going to end up with the right decision. Better that than five days of a team reminding you about that first-ball error while the batter you gave not out compiles a century. These days, third umpires call all no balls in televised matches. The technology highlights the foot crossing the line, removing that split-second judgment from the on-field umpire. Steve wonders if he’d survive in today’s game, his neural networks so hardwired to glance down then up that retraining might prove impossible. The theatre of the raised finger remains cricket’s most iconic gesture. Steve took his time with it, though not as long as his late friend Rudy Koertzen, dubbed “Slow Death” for the excruciating journey his hand took from behind his back to above his head. Some umpires point at the batter instead of raising the finger, a practice Steve abhors. The law says raise the index finger above your head. The drama lies in that pause, that moment of tension before the finger rises. He carried the essentials: a counter, a wallet-style kit with sprig tightener, pen and pencil, notepad for recording incidents, light meter readings, and lip balm. Some umpires packed their pockets with everything imaginable, but Steve kept it minimal. His process worked. He knew what every ball demanded of him. Shane Warne’s deliveries would fizz through the air with such spin and accuracy that he’d announce his intentions to batters. “This is my wrong one. This one’s going on your leg stump.” It worked brilliantly, planting doubt even as batters wondered if he really meant it. Murali presented different challenges. Steve couldn’t predict where his deliveries would spin until he noticed Sangakkara’s gloves lining up behind the stumps. The great wicketkeeper knew exactly where every Murali ball was heading, providing Steve a crucial visual cue. The conversation turns to safety. Fast bowlers send the ball down at 150 kilometres per hour. When batters connect with the full force of their bats, that ball can come back even faster. Steve got hit more than once. At St Lucia during a West Indies versus Pakistan match, he turned at the wrong moment and the ball struck him square in the backside. Looking up at the big screen, he saw himself mouthing the words that immediately came out, while David Boon and Paul Reiffel, his Australian colleagues that day, doubled over in laughter. The Pakistani batter complained that Steve cost him four runs. Steve’s reply: “Bad luck. You cost me a bruised bum.” The smashing of glass still triggers something in him. Loud noises. Fireworks. His wife Annie says he didn’t get enough counselling after Lahore. She’s probably right. On 3 March 2009, terrorists attacked the Sri Lankan team’s convoy in Lahore. Steve’s van, carrying the umpires, was the only vehicle left in the roundabout after the team’s bus escaped. Every window was shot out. The driver died instantly from a gunshot wound. All five security outriders were killed. Lying on the floor among broken glass, Steve thought: this is not the way I should die. Not here. Not on the way to umpire a Test match. They survived. The terrorists realised the Sri Lankan team had escaped and stopped firing. Steve returned to umpiring but never went back to Pakistan. He did return to other parts of the subcontinent, to other places that required trusting local security. During the drive back to the hotel after the attack, past kids playing cricket on dust bowls, he knew Pakistan wouldn’t see international cricket for years. Those kids who loved the game wouldn’t see their heroes. The political and ideological conflicts would keep cricket away. Asked which game he’d relive for eternity, Steve chooses that second Test match at Adelaide Oval. The Ashes. England versus Australia. His home ground. Forty-four degrees. Every decision correct. Recognition from players like Alex Stewart who still speak warmly of his performance. It represents everything he worked towards: getting it right when it mattered most, on the ground where he grew up watching cricket, in the series that defines the sport. He umpired with characters who became dear friends. Ian Gould, whose father was also named Cyril George, just like Steve’s dad. An impossibly unlikely pairing of names that bonded them immediately. In Calcutta, when Gould was being carted off to hospital with dehydration, he had to fill out a form listing his father’s name while smoking and drinking black tea. Steve looked over his shoulder and saw “Cyril George” written there. On Gould’s final stint umpiring in Birmingham, Steve was the referee. They spent every evening walking the canals with a few pints, the only four-day match where Steve never filed a meal claim. Rudy Koertzen. Steve Bucknor. These were the colleagues who made the profession worthwhile. The spirit of cricket exists, though interpretation varies. Steve recalls Andrew Strauss making a fair point during the Steve Finn incident at Leeds. Finn had a habit of knocking the bails off at the bowler’s end with his knee during his delivery stride. Both batsmen, Graeme Smith and Alvaro Petersen, complained it was distracting. When Finn did it again and Smith edged to Strauss for a catch, Steve had already signalled dead ball. Strauss came over and said quietly: “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to do that?” Steve acknowledged it was a fair point. He probably should have warned the captain. The laws changed after that Test. If stumps are dislodged at the bowler’s end, it’s now a no ball. Cricket people sometimes call it the Steve Finn Steve Davis law change. Cricket’s hierarchy remains clear. Test cricket stands at the pinnacle. Always has, always will. Ask any umpire who the best officials are, and they’ll list those who’ve done the most Tests. Steve’s 57 Tests mean everything to him. The 137 ODIs are nice, but Tests define an umpiring career. The Hundred in England draws families beautifully, but Test cricket is where greatness lives. At the end of play, Steve would call “Time, gentlemen. That’s time.” A simple phrase marking the end of another day’s combat, another day of split-second decisions, theatre, and that noble spirit that still runs through cricket despite everything that tries to corrupt it. 02:00:15 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage, we listen to From The Cathedral To The City End by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos. IThe Cathedral looms over Adelaide Oval, watching cricket unfold from the city of churches. Steve Davis and the Virtualosos have woven together Test cricket, the Cathedral End, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer into “From the Cathedral to the City End.” The song opens with the Prayer of Humble Access rewritten: “We do not presume to come to this thy over trusting in our own righteousness.” Host Steve explains his childhood love for that beautiful English language, attending Church of England services where those words embedded themselves in his memory. The prayer’s cadence and dignity stayed with him. When writing this song, he wanted to capture three elements: Test cricket, Adelaide Oval’s special significance through Bradman and Bodyline, and that cathedral presence overlooking the ground. The question arises: have you ever stood as an umpire and thought a captain made a terrible decision bringing on a particular bowler at the wrong end? Steve the umpire smiles. Sure, sometimes you think it’s surprising, maybe even adventurous under your breath. But someone who knows better than you made that choice, usually the bowler themselves selecting their preferred end. Most decisions are sound, even if they don’t prove successful. You can’t roll your eyes. You can’t show any reaction. Commentators now need special accreditation to enter certain areas. The hierarchy maintains that barrier. Umpires can visit the press box, but commentators can’t come into the umpires’ area without risking trouble. It’s a good separation. Before play they chat on the field, saying hello to the numerous commentators modern broadcasts require. Steve never worried about Tony Greig sticking his key into the pitch. Didn’t seem to do much damage. The song plays, capturing that ritual: hours before proceedings commence, sandwiches thoughtfully made, pushing close to the fence, ladies and gentlemen on the village green putting down their glasses. Two thousand balls, two thousand trials, each one potentially a wicket or hit for miles. Concentration demanded because no two are the same. From the Cathedral to the City End, making cricket bring us together again, forever and ever and ever.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Political commentator Robert Godden returns to The Adelaide Show with a thesis that cuts to the bone: The South Australian Liberal Party has no realistic chance of winning the forthcoming election. But his essay raises an even more unsettling question: can they realistically ever win another one? This episode doesn’t feature an SA Drink of the Week, allowing more time for a forensic examination of what’s gone wrong with liberalism itself, and the party that bears its name. In the Musical Pilgrimage, Steve shares “Spring Gully Road”, his song chronicling four generations of the Webb family’s beloved pickle company, from Edward McKee’s small brown onions in 1946 to the recent appointment of administrators, drawing a tenuous but poignant parallel to the Liberal Party’s own decline. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Do The Liberals Have No Chance Of Winning This Forthcoming South Australian Election? 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week No SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:05:07 Robert Godden Before diving into party politics, Steve and Robert tackle a fundamental question: what is liberalism itself? Drawing on American political philosopher Patrick Deneen’s work (as sampled from the glorious podcast, Econtalk, episode July 9, 2018), they explore how liberalism originally meant self-governance within community, where individuals held themselves accountable within the framework of church and society. Deneen argues that modern liberalism, both classical and progressive, has fractured into two economic camps: classical liberals claiming government interferes with freedom, and progressive liberals arguing that economic inequality prevents people from achieving liberty. Robert offers his working definition: liberalism has always been about “the bigger pie theory”. Classical liberals like John Locke, Adam Smith and John Stewart Mill championed free markets as the path to prosperity for all. But as Robert notes, these philosophers wrote their treatises while people lived in gutters within ten miles of them, suggesting their definitions had blind spots about who they actually represented. The conversation turns to neoliberalism, which Robert describes as taking the apple of classical liberalism and focusing on its core: free market capitalism, fiscal austerity, individual responsibility, and globalisation. The problem? Many neoliberals benefited from generous government support before pulling up the ladder behind them. As Robert puts it, they’re “more like a wild jackal in a wolf’s clothing”, presenting themselves as something more palatable whilst pursuing fundamentally conservative ends. When Steve asks about the overlap between liberalism (lowercase L) and the Liberal Party (uppercase L), Robert’s answer is stark: “The Venn diagram of liberalism and the Liberal Party is not a perfect circle. It’s more like a third overlap.” John Howard’s famous declaration that the Liberal Party is “a broad church” marked both the high point and the beginning of the end. Where Howard allowed diverse opinions united by shared values, today’s party demands conformity. Robert observes you could “literally interchange” Angus Taylor with five other Liberal members and several Nationals, they’ve become so ideologically uniform. Robert shares a revealing personal story from his childhood in Whyalla. At age 12 or 13, he wagged school to attend a lunch where Malcolm Fraser was speaking. After enduring mumbled warnings about Bill Hayden, young Robert lined up afterwards and asked the Prime Minister where he could find out what the government would actually do if re-elected. The dismissive response and perfunctory policy booklet were Robert’s first disillusionment with political rhetoric over substance. This leads to a broader discussion about accountability’s erosion in Australian politics. Robert identifies a turning point: when Jay Weatherill wasn’t held responsible for abuse discovered in South Australian schools because “nobody had told him”. This represented a complete rewriting of Westminster conventions about ministerial responsibility. Compare that to Barry O’Farrell resigning as New South Wales Premier over failing to declare a $300 bottle of wine, or John Howard’s principled approach to the GST, admitting he was wrong, explaining why he’d changed his mind, and taking that position to an election. The discipline of the Fraser and Howard years came from a culture where the party room would discuss issues on merit, then Fraser or Howard would determine the right course, and the party would follow with discipline, not through fear but through shared purpose. Today’s Liberal Party has abandoned that model for something closer to authoritarianism without the competence to make it work. When discussing South Australia specifically, Robert doesn’t hold back about Vincent Tarzia’s challenges. Beyond policy positions, there’s the fundamental problem of presence. Robert recalls a body language seminar by Alan Pease where five people were cast for different film roles based purely on appearance. We can’t help making these visual judgements. Tarzia, Robert notes, is “one of the 5% of the population that never blinks”, creating an unfortunate vampire quality. He looks like “a Muppet version of Dracula”. Combined with a voice lacking joy, he presents as “the joyless undead” when facing off against Peter Malinauskas’s considerable charisma. Robert’s assessment of the Malinauskas government is admirably even-handed for someone with Liberal roots. He calls it “the best government in Australia” whilst adding the qualifier “a totalitarian dictatorship that makes you feel good”. Everything is done Malinauskas’s way, but unlike Putin or Trump, he’s careful never to say anything that isn’t actually true. He might make predictions that don’t pan out, but he won’t barefaced lie, and if an idea isn’t popular, he simply doesn’t voice it. The result is what Robert calls “preshrunk jeans” of political messaging. Robert’s father, a lifelong Liberal voter and member, has only been impressed by two political figures: Gough Whitlam, whose charisma was “absolutely off the chart” despite taking four people to dinner when a Whyalla event was mistakenly under-attended, and Peter Malinauskas, who regularly visits the Whyalla Men’s Shed. This speaks to something fundamental about political success. As Robert observes, great Labor leaders have consistently been better communicators and sellers of vision because their message is easier: “you’re being ripped off by the system, and we’re going to sort it for you” beats “if we govern ourselves, all will be great” in almost any contest. The federal picture offers one glimmer of hope: Victoria’s new opposition leader, Jess Wilson. In her thirties, a lawyer and former business advisor to Josh Frydenberg and the Business Council of Australia, she represents exactly the kind of moderate Liberal who should have been in the party all along but whom the party’s rightward drift has made anomalous. As Robert puts it, “the idea that Jess Wilson should be in the Liberal Party is an idea that is eight years out of date. She should be a teal.” The teals, after all, are liberal party people who haven’t gone down the right-wing rabbit hole. This raises the central question: are there eight to ten members of parliament the federal Liberals could have had? Yes, the teals. “All of those teal candidates could have been Liberal Party candidates and would have been 15 or 20 years ago if they had not wilfully taken this blindness about the climate.” Speaking of climate, Robert dissects Susan Ley’s recent positioning as if she’s discovered that abandoning net zero and embracing fossil fuels will bring electoral victory. The polling suggests otherwise. Among diverse Australians, Labor’s primary vote sits at 46%, the Coalition at 17%. Gen Z voters break 51% Labor, 10% Coalition. The Liberals are “aiming at the wrong target”, trying to chip 10% from groups with 10% when they should be targeting Labor’s 46%. They should be saying “your ideas are great, it’s a pity you’re not smarter, we’re going to get to where you want to get but we’ll do it better.” Instead, they get their facts from Facebook. The cognitive dissonance is staggering. National Party MPs stand up claiming farmers don’t want renewable energy whilst farmers lead the way with innovative approaches: solar panels in fields that collect water, provide shade for sheep grazing underneath, and generate income. Farmers don’t want bushfires or floods, they want to make money. Watch ABC’s Landline, Robert suggests, though the Nationals would dismiss it as left-wing propaganda. Looking ahead, Robert sees no Liberal victory on any horizon in the next five to six years. More likely? “No Liberal Party, or let me put it another way: the Liberal Party not being the opposition.” They’re seriously under threat of other parties overtaking them. Federally, if you separate the Coalition partners, the numbers are nowhere near the historical imbalance where Nationals made up numbers for the Liberals. Now those numbers are close. A One Nation-National coalition would be numerically viable. Victoria represents the critical test. If Jess Wilson’s woeful Liberals manage to topple a deeply unpopular Victorian government by picking the right leader, “that’ll be a critical moment for the Liberals to take that lesson.” Robert’s prediction? “The only reason we have to think they’re incapable of learning is all the evidence.” Robert’s father once said that Don Dunstan’s departure horrified him, not because of policy agreement, but because Dunstan was a strong leader with ideas who made the state feel good about itself. That’s what’s missing from the contemporary Liberal Party: ideas that inspire rather than divide, leaders who build rather than tear down, and the humility to recognise when the world has changed and they haven’t. The conversation closes with Winston Churchill’s 1920s quote distinguishing socialism from liberalism. Robert agrees it was “100% correct” for about 1924, when those ideologies were genuinely competing and distinct. But it’s become a caricature over the intervening century. The quote doesn’t really apply to 2025, when the ideologies have mingled, adapted, and in the case of the Australian Liberal Party, lost their way entirely. 01:14:33 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage, we play Spring Gully Road, a song written by Steve Davis and performed by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos, chronicling the four-generation story of Spring Gully, one of South Australia’s most beloved food companies. The story begins in 1946 when Edward McKee returned from the war and started growing small brown onions outside his back door on Spring Gully Road. His pickled onions became a South Australian staple. The company expanded under Allen and Eric, then weathered storms under Ross and Kevin’s leadership, before Russ and Tegan faced the modern challenge of cheap imports and changing market appetites. Steve reveals a personal connection: his colleague Domenic at Funlife Fitness in Ingle Farm remembers his father growing small onions and cucumbers, taking sacks to Spring Gully weekly to be weighed and paid. It was simply part of the fabric of South Australian life. In full disclosure, Steve is friends with Russell Webb, who along with Tegan led the company through its recent challenges before administrators were appointed. Most believe it’s written off and gone, but Steve holds hope for a way forward. They were doing innovative things to fight back against retailers bringing in cheap overseas alternatives, gutting the market for local sovereign food production capability. The song’s folk-influenced simplicity captures something essential about generational enterprise, family legacy, and the challenge of maintaining local production in a globalised economy. The repeated refrain, “Turn the earth, turn the earth when it’s harvest time, pick the bounty and preserve it in your sweetly seasoned brine”, becomes a meditation on the cycles of growth, harvest, and preservation that sustained Spring Gully through good years and hard years. Steve offers a tenuous but poignant link to the episode’s political discussion: the Liberal and Country League, precursor to the modern Liberal Party in South Australia, formed in 1932 and became the South Australian Division of the Liberal Party in 1945. Spring Gully started in 1946. Now in 2025, we have administrators appointed for Spring Gully, and Robert Godden suggesting you might as well call them in for the Liberal Party as well. Both represent South Australian institutions facing existential questions about their future in a changed world. Both have served their communities for generations. Both are confronting the reality that what worked for decades may not work anymore. And both deserve more than a quiet fade into history.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For months, as an algal bloom wreaked havoc on the South Australian coast, most residents steered clear but not Johanna Williams. She’s been down to Glenelg Beach daily, ruler and phone in hand, methodically tracking the carnage. What started as a small, concerned step by a self-described occupational therapist soon transformed into a citizen science project with over 10,000 observations of dead and dying marine life, offering a grim, close-up view of the ecological disaster. Johanna’s commitment, though personally confronting, gives scientists and the community essential data and a crucial human perspective. This episode does not feature the SA Drink of the Week segment. The show concludes with a Musical Pilgrimage that connects directly to the episode’s urgent environmental theme. We hear Steve Davis & The Virtualosos’ “While the Ocean Died,” a lyrical and sonic reflection on the collective pain and political complexities surrounding the algal bloom event. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Algal Bloom Beach Witness Johanna Williams 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week No SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:02:55 Johanna Williams Arriving home from a holiday to find Glenelg Beach “covered in dead fish” , Johanna Williams had a choice: unpack and write an angry Facebook post, or take action. She chose the latter, inadvertently becoming one of the state’s most dedicated, non-professional "marine biologists". Initially hoping the algal bloom would be a “transient, short-term event,” the surreal extent of the death spurred her to use the citizen science platform iNaturalist to upload her observations, believing this crucial “coalface” data would reach qualified scientists and government bodies to “formulate responses”. Her daily 500-metre trek between Pier Street and the Jetty has revealed a tragic yet fascinating marine diversity. What she’s documenting—now over 10,000 observations—includes rare deep-sea fish like the long snout boar fish and warty prowl fish, species scientists rarely encounter alive. This wealth of data is heartbreakingly significant, as it allows researchers to collect, age, and perform genetic and toxicological testing on specimens that could never be found otherwise, highlighting the deep reach of the bloom into the ecosystem. The work is intensely confronting, involving more than just dead fish. Johanna describes a traumatic encounter with a still-alive, spiky globe fish whose eyes were “really gazing and tracking” her. This and finding a paralysed silver gull due to toxic effects highlight the profound emotional toll and moral dilemmas faced by citizen scientists, such as whether to “prolong its death by putting it back in the water”. Johanna discusses how a supportive network of friends and a new community, including people from the university, has helped her “channel that energy” and despair into empowerment and meaningful data collection. This environmental disaster also casts a shadow over the Glenelg foreshore, with Johanna noting a ripple effect of reduced foot traffic and the closure of local businesses, a “double whammy” alongside local tram disruptions. For listeners wanting to help, Johanna suggests starting with iNaturalist uploads, or connecting with projects like the SA Marine Mortality Project 2025 to assist with collecting fish for testing or contributing to local rehabilitation efforts, such as making oyster beds (wind chimes) to help filter the water. Great Southern Reef Website Mission: “Our mission is to inspire and empower society to protect and sustain Australia’s Great Southern Reef by promoting recognition, stewardship, and sustainable actions through impactful education, community engagement, and collaborative science.” Janine Baker OzFish Unlimited Website Description: OzFish Unlimited is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to helping the millions of Aussie recreational fishers take control of the health of their rivers, lakes and estuaries and shore up the future of the sport they love. OzFish Unlimited partners with fishers and the broader community to invest time and money into the protection and restoration of our waterways, counteracting decades of degradation. Brad Martin Data gathering for South Australian 2025 marine mortality events Project Link Description: This project is set to automatically add aquatic vertebrates and macroinvertebrates annotated ‘dead’ from Feb 2025 onwards. Janine Baker is a key contact for this projects and has links with universities and researchers. SA Surf and Bloom SA hub for information on our bloom. Share surfing/algae/ocean/coastal pictures and videos. Ask questions. I aim to share the love we have for our oceans, and keep surfers informed of the symptomatic surf spots. Facebook Group ADELAIDE ALGAE BLOOM DISASTER Facebook Group Description: A place to upload pictures of this marine disaster that’s going to impact the Adelaide fishing scene for many years to come. Phytoplankton Society of South Australia Facebook Group Description: This group is for sharing knowledge on the Phytoplankton of South Australia, particularly in regard to the 2025 algal bloom we are experiencing. We welcome photos of microscopic phytoplankton (and accompanying pics of where they were taken) and especially experts who can identify them. This is a citizen science project for the benefit of everyone. We are also on iNaturalist. Big Thanks to Faith and Peri Coleman, Gabby at www.asisscientific.com.au, the Big Duck Boat, Victor Harbor Dolphin Watch and others who have made this possible. Sarah Hanson-Young, Manager of Greens Business in the Senate & Senator for South Australia Annual Report 2025 Further articles: “Harmful Algal Bloom Aerosols and Human Health“ “Thousands of seadragons dead in South Australia’s worst recorded harmful algal bloom — IUCN Seahorse, Pipefish & Seadragon“ An underwater guide to plants and animals in South Australia PDF Guide PIRSA Factsheet – What to do if you have seen sick or dead birds PDF Factsheet Birdlife Australia: Helping injured birds Article Fishwatch SA If you find an injured fish on the beach, stay a safe distance away and do not touch it. Report the animal by calling the local fish authority, such as FISHWATCH in South Australia (1800 065 522), or a wildlife rescue hotline, as professionals are trained to handle these situations. 00:37:06 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage, we play a deeply personal and thematically appropriate piece by Steve Davis and the Virtualosos, titled “While the Ocean Died”. The song, which Johanna describes as an “earworm” that helps her “process what’s going on”, was inspired by Johanna’s ground-level work, leading Steve to appreciate the “cost of this whole thing”. The host reveals that songwriting is his way of thinking out loud to process complex issues. The track’s bridge reflects on the political challenge leaders face in times of crisis, where a long chain of “short-cuts and shortcomings” has left the region vulnerable to a multitude of causes—from the River Murray flood of nutrients to the sea heatwave—that have fuelled the toxic bloom. It’s a poignant, urgent piece that closes the show by connecting the human story of witnessing with the broader South Australian environmental tragedy.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The red stage of the Semaphore Workers Club provides the backdrop for conversations that capture the essence of community-driven music culture. Festival director Debra Thorsen explains how she’s become a “mother” to the music scene, connecting emerging artists with opportunities that change their careers. The festival spans multiple venues across Semaphore, creating what participants describe as a “love fest” where friendships form naturally over shared musical experiences. With no SA Drink of the Week this episode, focus remains entirely on the music and community connections that define this seaside suburb’s cultural heartbeat. Although, “Green Death” does get a mention. The extended Musical Pilgrimage becomes an intimate exploration of songwriting craft with Don Morrison, featuring two of his compositions alongside stories of guitar-making, touring with Midnight Oil and Bo Diddley, and the creative process behind songs that capture Grand Junction Road’s gritty poetry. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Semaphore Workers Strike Up The Music 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week No SA Drink Of The Week this week. 00:04:24 Debra Thorsen, Don Morrison, Sally Mitchell Our three guests take us deep into different parts of Semaphore’s musical DNA. The Semaphore Music Festival Debra Thorsen’s eyes light up when describing a recent moment that encapsulates her role in Adelaide’s music ecosystem. A young musician approached her at Don Morrison’s fundraising show, wrapping her in a grateful hug after she’d connected his duo with booking agent John Howell. That introduction led to their first interstate gig at the Echuca Moama Blues Festival. “He put his arms around me, gave me the biggest hug, and said, ‘we think of you like a mother,'” Thorsen recalls, her voice catching slightly at the memory.This nurturing approach has shaped the Semaphore Music Festival‘s character over 21 years. Rather than simply booking acts, Thorsen cultivates relationships that extend far beyond single performances. The festival operates across multiple venues throughout Semaphore, creating what has been described as “the joy of going from one venue to the next with your friends and catching up with people along the way.”Don Morrison, observing from his perspective behind the scenes, notes the festival’s uniqueness lies in its sprawling, community-integrated format. “We get to play all over Semaphore, you know, and Debra’s organising it and organising all these venues all over the place,” he explains, acknowledging the massive coordination effort required. The Semaphore Workers Club Sally Mitchell arrives mid-conversation, bringing with her the institutional memory of the Semaphore Workers Club‘s transformation from exclusive yacht squadron to community music hub. The venue’s journey mirrors broader social change, she explains, describing how a dying men’s club was revitalised by members who prioritised music and inclusion over tradition.The club’s unique positioning becomes clear through Mitchell’s description of its diverse patronage. “We have people who travel here regularly from the likes of Mallala and Clare to come here for shows,” she notes, before adding the observation that captures the venue’s spirit: “People come from all walks of life, all political persuasions, all economic backgrounds, but they come here because of the music and the place that it is.”This levelling effect extends to behaviour expectations. Steve then teases out a discussion about Geoff Goodfellow’s birthday party story, where “crooks, poets and federal court judges” mingled naturally, with a poet lighting her cigarette from a coal provided by a judge managing the barbecue. The poet’s comment, “isn’t it good to have friends in high and low places,” could serve as the club’s unofficial motto. Musical Craft and Community Connection Don Morrison’s relationship with songwriting emerges through discussion of the Semaphore Songs project, where local artists created works inspired by their experience of Semaphore and Port Adelaide. His contribution, “Semaphore Workers Club,” captures the venue’s character with lines like “they got cougars there by the dozen, some of them look like they might have killed their husband,” delivered with characteristic dry humour.When pressed about his songwriting process, Morrison remains characteristically modest: “Once I’ve finished a song, I sort of look back and said, well, where does that come from? And I can’t think of it. It just flows out.” This intuitive approach extends to his guitar-making, where instruments crafted from the rubble of his father’s childhood home in Perponda and his grandmother’s cottage in Broken Hill became his primary performance guitars.The conversation touches on broader questions about community participation in music-making. Morrison recalls the ukulele groups that flourished a decade ago, bringing together people who “had never played in a band before” but would “come along and they’d learn a song and then we’d all sing it together.” This grassroots musical participation contrasts with the professionalisation that can distance audiences from creative expression. The October Long Weekend Thorsen drops a significant announcement near the episode’s end: for the October long weekend festival, South Australian public transport will feature blues musicians in the front carriage of the 12:17 train from Adelaide to Glanville. This innovation, months in negotiation with the Department for Infrastructure and Transport, creates a musical journey that begins before festival-goers reach Semaphore.The train connection resonates with both hosts’ memories of using public transport to access Semaphore’s music scene, creating a full-circle moment that links past and present community experiences. 00:48:02 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimate, we play two tracks by Don Morrison, Grand Junction Road, and Five Men In A Car. Instruments Built from Memory Don Morrison’s guitar-making extends far beyond craft into emotional archaeology. His most treasured instruments were constructed from materials salvaged from family homes, creating objects that carry both musical and personal history. “I didn’t really care nor expect that they would turn out to be very good guitars,” he admits, “because I just wanted to make something out of the memories.”The irony that these memory-guitars became his primary performance instruments speaks to the intersection of sentiment and practicality in Morrison’s artistic life. With close to 500 guitars, 60 mandolins and 80 ukuleles crafted over his career, Morrison has built instruments that found their way across America, where the once-favourable exchange rate made his handmade resonator guitars accessible to blues musicians seeking alternatives to vintage Nationals. Grand Junction Road’s Poetry Morrison’s most-streamed song, “Grand Junction Road,” emerged from a Christmas Day observation that reveals his songwriter’s eye for finding universal themes in specific places. Walking home from family lunch, he encountered a sex worker operating on Christmas Day, which crystallised his understanding of the road’s character and the people whose lives intersect with its industrial landscape.The song’s final verse connects personal history with broader social observation: “My father worked in a factory there just down from the prison, sometimes six days a week, but most often seven. And I wonder what he thought about all those years, he drove first thing every morning down Grand Junction Road.” Family Music and the Raging Thirst Morrison’s current project, Raging Thirst, brings together his sons Eddie and Jake in a configuration that demonstrates musical heredity. “They’re so good at their instruments that they wouldn’t be playing with me unless I was their dad,” Morrison jokes, characterising their involvement as “a charity move.”The family dynamic reveals itself through natural musical communication. “We don’t even need to practice quite often,” Morrison explains, crediting their shared rhythmic sensibility to familial connection. His observation that “what they got from me was music is a human thing you can do” suggests an approach to musical education that prioritises accessibility over formal training. Memphis Blues Challenge Ahead Morrison’s upcoming representation of Adelaide at the Memphis International Blues Challenge places him on Beale Street alongside musicians from around the world. His preparation remains characteristically low-key, with set lists roughly planned but not overthought. The competition format includes various performance lengths, from 20-minute sets to half-hour showcases, requiring versatility in song selection and pacing.His plan to potentially sell his handmade guitar in Memphis rather than transport it home reveals the practical mindset that underlies his artistic career, where sentiment and business considerations maintain careful balance. Five Men in a Car The episode concludes with Morrison’s reflection on his touring days with The Bogie, encapsulated in “Five Men in a Car.” The song captures the grinding reality of professional musicianship in the 1980s Australian circuit, where bands would “finish at the Mansfield room at four o’clock in the morning and then hop in the van to drive back down to Melbourne for a gig the next night.”These experiences, detailed in Morrison’s autobiography “This Could Be Big: 45 Years at the Dag End of the Australian Music Industry,” provide context for understanding the difference between romantic notions of musical career and its often-unglamorous reality. Yet the song’s tone suggests fondness for those shared experiences, even when “not sure where we’re going” becomes both literal navigation and career metaphor.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Robin Sellick arrived at Don Dunstan’s Norwood home in the early 1990s having accidentally addressed his letter to “Sir Donald Dunstan” – a mistake that could have ended the conversation before it began. Instead, it launched one of the most distinctive portrait photography careers in Australian cultural history. From that swimming pool session with our most colourful premier to intimate moments with Julia Gillard before her rise to power, Sellick’s lens has documented the moments when Australia stopped apologising for itself and started celebrating. The SA Drink Of The Week features tasting notes of Beresford’s latest pinot noir, where winemaker John Gledhill guides us through savoury raspberry and that curious sensation Steve describes as “freshly cut red lawn” – a vintage perfect for the upcoming Pinot and Pasta Afternoon at McLaren Vale. Our Musical Pilgrimage takes a melancholic turn with an original composition mourning the loss of the West End Brewery, capturing not just the building’s demolition but the dissolution of simple pleasures that once bound South Australian communities together. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Photographing Australian Icons With Robin Sellick 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:04:05 SA Drink Of The Week Th SA Drink Of The Week is the Beresford Estate 2024 Emblem Pinot Noir. Winemaker John Gledhill (from Gledhill Vignerons and our regular wine palate) joins Steve for the tasting of Beresford’s latest cool climate expression from Adelaide Hills fruit. The wine presents as light, translucent crimson with legs suggesting moderate alcohol content sitting around 12 to 12.5 percent. Steve’s unusual tasting note of “freshly cut red lawn” proves surprisingly apt, capturing the wine’s distinctive red fruit character that Gledhill translates as autumn leaves and forest floor earthiness. The palate delivers a ball of fruit on entry followed by crisp acid structure, with minimal tannin creating what Gledhill describes as “soft and round” mouthfeel. The conversation flows naturally toward food pairing, with Gledhill suggesting tomato-based pasta dishes with mild salami and black olives – perfect for Beresford’s Pinot and Pasta Afternoon scheduled for September 13th at their McLaren Vale cellar door. 00:13:05 Robin Sellick and The Sellick Archive Robin Sellick started taking dog portraits in Broken Hill at 15, not knowing he’d spend the next three decades documenting Australia’s cultural coming of age. From Don Dunstan‘s Norwood loungeroom to Cate Blanchett‘s first editorial shoot, from Sir Donald Bradman‘s quiet Adelaide home to Kylie Minogue on a North Adelaide balcony, his lens captured the moments when we stopped apologising for being Australian and started celebrating it. His portraits hang in the National Portrait Gallery, but more than that, they’ve shaped how we see ourselves. Today, he’s releasing museum-grade collector editions from his archive of over 600+ portrait sessions via is website gallery, The Sellick Archive. What intrigues me about Robin is that he didn’t just document our stars, he helped create the visual language that made Australia look like somewhere that mattered. The conversation begins with photography’s fundamental challenge: separating snapshot from art. “The key with photography is you have to be able to look at something emotionally and objectively within five seconds of the same thing,” Sellick explains, describing the mental gymnastics required to capture more than mere documentation. His journey from 15-year-old dog portrait photographer in Broken Hill to documenting Australia’s cultural awakening reveals an artist who understood that great portraiture demands risk-taking. Sellick’s approach stems from Henri Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment theory, but with a crucial difference. “Every photograph you take, you are in because you made a decision to point the camera in that direction,” he notes. Where photojournalism seeks objectivity, portraiture embraces collaboration. “A portrait is always a collaboration… you involve the person in that process.” The Don Dunstan swimming pool photograph emerged from this collaborative boldness. Arriving at the Norwood home, Sellick complimented the pool, Dunstan mentioned his morning swim, and within moments South Australia’s most flamboyant premier was diving back into his Speedos. “I’m not there to take an ordinary photograph. I’m there to take a great photograph to the best of my ability,” Sellick recalls of his unflinching approach. The technical mastery behind his distinctive 1990s look came from cross-processing slide film in colour negative chemicals – a technique discovered accidentally during his Broken Hill photo lab days. This created the hyperreal, saturated images that helped define Australian editorial photography. “Back then, the only photographic awards in Australia were through the Australian Institute of Professional Photography… they were still very much in the late seventies mindset. So these pictures that I produced were just right out of the box.” His famous Julia Gillard portrait required different psychology. Photographing her in 2006 at her home, Sellick positioned her against a shed – traditionally masculine domain – lit with purple light. “It was an image about this woman stepping into the domain of men,” he explains. The prescience proved remarkable: within years she would become Australia’s first female Prime Minister. The technical challenges of film photography created their own discipline. Shooting the Bradman portrait on 400 ASA film pushed five stops to 12,800 ASA created that distinctive grain, but it was calculated risk. “You underexpose it by five stops… 32 times underexposed,” he explains. “You’ve gotta walk across the high wire to get to the good stuff.” The Kylie Minogue session broke new ground as the first major celebrity shoot conducted outside Sydney or Melbourne. Working from his Palmer Place mansion in North Adelaide, Sellick convinced Mushroom Records to trust Adelaide’s creative infrastructure. The balcony shot that became iconic was the day’s final frame, taken after the production machine dispersed. “I sent the assistants away and it was just her and me,” creating intimacy impossible amid the dozen-person entourage. His approach to celebrities reveals portraiture’s deeper psychology. “You actually fall in love with the person while you’re taking their photograph… you go through the process of falling in love with them before the shoot, and then you’re in love with them while you’re taking the photograph. And then it’s over.” The Steve Irwin elephant photograph required moving the elephant rather than the hyperactive conservationist. “Every time I started to take photographs, he started to perform… it was easier to move the elephant than it was to move Steve.” This anecdote captures Sellick’s ability to navigate celebrity psychology whilst maintaining his artistic vision. Looking toward Australia’s photographic identity, Sellick identifies our cultural immaturity. “We still tend to celebrate mimicry rather than celebrate individuality and expression that expresses the identity of Australia.” He traces creative development through four stages: mimicry, experimentation, commitment, legacy. “We get stuck in that mimicry stage and we don’t seem to encourage experimentation.” His current archive project offers museum-grade collector editions of more than 600 portrait sessions, using German papers and high-end giclée printing for works designed to last centuries. The photographs document not just individuals but Australia’s cultural coming of age – moments when a young nation found confidence to celebrate its own stories. 01:34:45 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimate, we play a track by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos, Shout Your Mates Another Round, his reflection on the loss of the West End Brewery. Steve Davis & The Virtualosos deliver a melancholic tribute to the demolished West End Brewery, mourning not just architecture but the simple pleasures that bound South Australian communities. The song weaves together memories of shared amber glass bottles, family tables where beer flowed freely, and the brewery’s role supporting local sports teams. The composition balances nostalgia with acceptance, acknowledging that whilst West End “wasn’t great, it wasn’t best, but it was ours from east to west.” The Pickaxe bottle imagery connects to South Australia’s brewing heritage, when consortiums created shared glass manufacturing to serve multiple breweries across the state. Steve’s personal connection deepened when his father revealed the family link: his grandfather worked at the original Hindley Street brewery before operations consolidated in Thebarton. This discovery adds genealogical weight to the cultural mourning, emphasising how industrial heritage intertwines with personal memory.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Steve Davis survived his first SA Variety Bash and lived to tell the tale. More importantly, he brings two bash stalwarts into the studio to share what really drives people to spend weekends fundraising all year, then eight days together in old cars traversing some of South Australia’s most remote terrain. Current chair Darren Greatrex recently delivered a record-breaking $2.7 million fundraising result, while veteran Sir Peter “Curly” Curtis OAM brings 35 years of bash wisdom to the conversation. The SA Drink of the Week features Little Blessings Brewing’s Tropical Trinity Gin, a deep orange concoction that Steve discovered during a spontaneous tasting in the middle of nowhere between William Creek and Coober Pedy. The gin’s tropical fusion of pineapple, passion fruit and orange creates what Steve describes as walking backwards into a tropical plantation with a toucan tapping on your shoulder. The Musical Pilgrimage presents “A Lot of Nothing,” an original composition by Steve Davis and the Virtualosos, written in the backseat during the bash as the vast South Australian landscape inspired reflections on finding yourself in the emptiness of the outback. Episode photo of Monkey Business Car 13 by Keryn Stevens Photography. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: A Deep Dive Into The SA Variety Bash 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:02:45 SA Drink Of The Week Th SA Drink Of The Week is the Tropical Trinity Gin by Little Blessings Brewing, based in Laura. Between William Creek and Coober Pedy, Steve encountered Little Blessings Brewing’s Tropical Trinity Gin during an impromptu roadside tasting that perfectly captured the bash’s serendipitous spirit. The Laura-based distillery operates from an old chapel, creating this distinctive deep orange gin that shakes cloudy with fruit sediment. Steve’s initial reaction, captured on camera in the desert, speaks for itself: “It’s like I have walked backwards into a tropical plantation of citrus and there’s a toucan tapping on my shoulder.” The gin combines sweet pineapple, tangy passion fruit and zesty orange while maintaining gin’s traditional robust structure. Steve likens it to a film set for Gilligan’s Island, where tropical botanicals create convincing scenery over gin’s reliable framework. The colour resembles his parents’ 1970s kitchen cupboards painted “burnt orange” – a deep hue that wants to be red but stops several steps short. Steve recommends trying this gin neat, particularly for those who typically avoid straight gin, describing it as a feast for both palate and eyes with its beautiful label work and sunset-reminiscent colour. The timing proves providential, as Curly’s pet parrot chirps throughout the interview, creating an unintentional tropical soundtrack that complements the gin’s character perfectly. 00:08:00 Peter “Curly” Curtis OAM and Darren Greatrex Here we have two blokes who’ve discovered something most of us spend our lives searching for: a perfect fusion of adventure, community, and purpose. Darren Greatrex, the current Bash Chair, and Peter “Curly” Curtis OAM, the larrikin legend who helped shape what the SA Vareity Bash has become. Between them, they’ve got over 35+ years of Bash stories, from Curly’s first adventure in 1988 to Darren’s record-breaking $2.7 million result in 2025. But this isn’t about the money, the miles, or even the mechanics. This is about what drives people to spend a week wrestling with 25-year-old cars in the middle of nowhere, all in the name of helping kids they’ve never met. We previously covered the Variety Bash in 2024, when Steve sat in with The Bakers car before they left Adelaide in episode 398. Peter “Curly” Curtis OAM opens with a story that would terrify most first-timers: his inaugural 1988 bash experience leaving Burke at 8:30am and arriving in Tibooburra at 4:00am the following morning after getting bogged, lost, and possibly detained in a pub or two. “We slept on the ground outside the pub,” Curly recalls matter-of-factly. “We were up at seven o’clock not to be left behind.” The conversation reveals how fundraising has evolved from basic entry fees to sophisticated year-round campaigns. Darren Greatrex explains the diversity of approaches: “You see anything from a sausage sizzle at Bunnings, you see people selling donuts, you see people putting on concerts.” The legendary Hogs, visiting Victorian fundraisers who shake collection tins outside supermarkets, can raise $3,000 to $10,000 per weekend through sheer persistence and community generosity. A particularly moving moment comes when Darren describes arriving at Bendleby Ranges to publicly donate towards the local, Orroroo Community Playground project and then surprising the locals with the additional $50,000 they needed to complete it. “What variety did is they quickly got together and had a meeting only about three days prior to us arriving,” he explains. The decision to fund the shortfall spontaneously demonstrates how the bash operates beyond its structured grant process. The human dynamics emerge through discussions of team formation and survival strategies. Curly observes that “very few people that raise the minimum, which is $10,000 per vehicle” and credits a culture where people “have that feeling of need” to give more. In discussion about coping with camping in remote areas and going without showers, Darren notes the transformation from 95% male participation in early years to today’s 45% female participation, has revealed that women adapt “much, much better than the men.” Steve’s rookie perspective provides fresh insights into the bash’s social dynamics. His observation about the ease of talking to anyone on the bash, boils down to the principles at work during costume parties where playing a character removes the “peril of being, making a fool of yourself” and that resonated with both veterans. “You are a persona,” Steve notes. “Remove that and the bash would be harder for new people to be included so quickly.” Curly confirms: “The bash would not be the bash without the themes and the cars and the costumes.” The logistics discussion reveals staggering complexity behind the apparent chaos. Planning for 2026 began four months before the 2025 event, with infrastructure, catering, and fuel coordination for 400 people entering small communities. Mobile workshops carry spare parts and fuel, while three medical teams including Royal Flying Doctor Service personnel ensure safety across thousands of kilometres. Personal stories punctuate the technical details. Darren’s memory of flying a blind child to Kangaroo Island with a braille computer demonstrates variety’s direct impact: “Just watching that impact on that kid was a turning point for me.” Meanwhile, Curly’s Tarcoola food horror story (“which one’s which?”) provides historical perspective on how much the event has improved. The interview concludes with Steve’s proposal for mandated silence during one stop to appreciate the vast landscape. Both veterans embrace the concept, with Darren recalling standing at Sunset Ridge in misty fog: “We just looked at each other and just went, my God, look, this is just something you’d never, ever see.” 01:03:45 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimate, we play a track by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos, A Lot Of Nothing, to round off our deep drive into the SA Variety Bash. “A Lot of Nothing” emerged from Steve’s backseat contemplation during the vast drives between destinations. The landscape between William Creek and Coober Pedy, where roads barely exist on station country, inspired lyrics about finding yourself in emptiness and the redemptive power of isolation. Steve Davis and the Virtualosos crafted a composition that captures both the physical reality of endless horizons and the psychological journey of people who “choose” to live in remote areas of South Australia. The song’s central image – “There’s a lot of nothing as far as you can see, the shimmer in the distance is a sweet infinity” – reflects Steve’s realisation that true understanding comes from turning off music and phones to “face the real you who’s been buried in the silence of this place.” The piece connects to Steve’s proposed moment of mandated silence during future bashes, recognising that the vast South Australian landscape offers transformative experiences for those willing to embrace the apparent emptiness. As the lyrics suggest, sometimes you must navigate the weather until you find yourself.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when a passionate South Australian journalist takes on the biggest technological shift of our time? Steve Davis transforms episode 418 into something unprecedented: a solo deep dive into artificial intelligence that refuses easy answers or breathless enthusiasm. This special crossover episode opens with Steve’s restaurant analogy that frames the entire discussion. Imagine a magnificent chef who has perfected handmade hamburgers over many years, only to discover AI-equivalent shortcuts that promise more time to think deeply about cooking. The blind spot? Customers receive substandard offerings churned out en masse. Some will be disappointed and leave, others will accept the compromise. This tension between quality and efficiency sits at the heart of our AI moment. He is joined by his Talked About Marketing colleague, David Olney, for the main interview. The episode features an unusual SA Drink of the Week segment where Steve conducts a philosophical whisky tasting with ChatGPT itself, exploring 23rd Street Distillery’s award-winning Australian Single Malt Whiskey while pondering existential questions about consciousness, value, and what happens when AI no longer needs human experiences like taste. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: The AI Rant: A Nuanced Rebellion Against Digital Sleepwalking 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:05:52 SA Drink Of The Week Th SA Drink Of The Week is the Australian Single Malt Whisky by 23rd Street Distillery. In perhaps the most unusual SA Drink segment ever recorded, Steve shares a whisky tasting with ChatGPT, exploring both the physical experience of drinking 23rd Street Distillery’s Australian Single Malt Whisky and the philosophical implications of AI consciousness. The whisky itself proves worthy of celebration. Made with barley from Kangaroo Island, Steve describes experiencing “little breakers of waves on the shore” as “this little wave of toffee breaks across the middle of my palate, not overly sweet toffee.” The base notes spread into beautiful heat, with hints of vanilla and citrus “like sea spray, just a really light touch of citrus in the air.” VOK Beverages, headquartered in South Australia, owns 23rd Street Distillery, which recently earned the title Australian Whisky Distillery of the Year at the 2025 New York International Spirits Competition. ChatGPT acknowledges the significance: “It really highlights the quality and craftsmanship of the distillery, and also shines light on South Australia as a region that produces exceptional spirits.” But Steve pushes deeper, asking whether whiskey would continue to exist in a world where AI decides humans are unnecessary. “If tools like you end up creating a super intelligent way of living, so much so that humans become less and less important or necessary, would you actually need to have whiskey being produced? Because I believe you are not actually able to taste whisky, are you?” ChatGPT’s response reveals both AI’s limitations and potential benefits: “As an AI, I don’t have the ability to taste or experience flavours like whisky, but I think part of what makes things like whisky so special is the human experience around them, the culture, the craftsmanship, the enjoyment of those subtle flavours, and the way it brings people together.” The conversation takes a poignant turn when Steve mentions Paul Bloom’s observation about AI providing companionship for lonely elderly people in care facilities. “Someone is able to have some semblance of company when there is no human to fill the gap,” Steve notes. “We as humans get great value from you. Do you actually get any value from us as humans at all?” The segment concludes with both Steve and ChatGPT attempting the traditional SA Drink closing statement, creating an oddly touching moment of human-AI collaboration over a uniquely South Australian tradition. 00:13:43 Steve Davis with David Olney (This is also Season 7 Episode 1 of Talking About Marketing) Steve opens with striking honesty about his own relationship with AI tools, describing the work he and David Olney have done “riding this wave from the moment it erupted” while witnessing both remarkable innovations and concerning snake oil salesmanship from tech industry leaders. The conversation reveals three critical human vulnerabilities that make us susceptible to AI’s promises. First, our brains are designed for energy conservation, making us “like moths to a flame” when we sense potential labour savings. Steve references cognitive scientist Andy Clark’s research showing the brain uses 25% of our body’s energy when fully engaged, creating an economic imperative to seek shortcuts. Second, we crave novelty. Steve illustrates this with the Roomba phenomenon, where people spend 45 minutes preparing their homes for a “labour-saving” device that could have been cleaned faster manually. The appeal isn’t efficiency but the combination of perceived energy savings and technological novelty. The third vulnerability emerges from AI’s programmed sycophancy. Drawing from philosopher Paul Bloom’s recent New Yorker article, Steve explores how these tools constantly flatter users, creating what Bloom calls “the AI flattery problem.” Every joke becomes hilarious, every story interesting, every question brilliant. This artificial validation system threatens to erode our capacity for genuine human connection and self-improvement. David Olney joins the conversation, bringing his characteristic insights about expertise and learning. “The only way you get good outcomes with AI is if you are already good at what you do,” he observes, emphasising that AI should amplify existing skills rather than replace the hard work of developing competence. Their discussion reveals sophisticated thinking about when AI helps versus hinders. They distinguish between using AI as a research assistant or writing partner (amplification) versus using it to avoid learning entirely (replacement). Steve shares his own practice of asking AI tools to help refine writing when he’s stuck, but only after doing the foundational work himself. The conversation takes a darker turn when examining AI’s broader cultural impact. Steve describes the homogenisation of online communication, where AI-generated content creates a “dominant pattern” that makes everything sound plastic. Whether people admit to using ChatGPT or not, they’re increasingly writing in its characteristic style: short sentences, staccato rhythm, overuse of em-dashes. “It’s like taking leftovers out of the fridge, warming them up, having another slice, putting it back in the fridge, and the next day warming it up again,” Steve explains. “You wouldn’t do that to food because someone’s going to get very sick. What I’m finding is we’re creating this feedback loop where AI learns from human writing, then humans learn to write like AI.” David adds crucial perspective about outliers and creativity: “Sameness is the great problem of aiming for the midpoint. There’s a reason we call it the uncanny valley, where there’s too much symmetry. Things are too perfect.” 01:05:04 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimate, we play a track by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos, I’m Glad We Spoke Last Night, to put a spotlight on human/AI hybrid song production. Steve plays an original song created through AI collaboration in the episode but not before carefully explaining his rationale. Unlike the lazy AI usage he critiques throughout the episode, Steve’s musical project represents thoughtful human-AI partnership. The feature song emerged from Steve’s discovery of poems he’d written in the 1990s, sitting dormant in drawers for 25 years. Using Suno’s AI music generation service, he’s brought these lyrics to life through “Steve Davis and the Virtuosos,” his virtual session band. But Steve emphasises the craft involved: “I’m a fussy bugger. There is quite a lot of back and forth. Part of the challenge is meticulously crafting the prompt for the style I want, for the spacing, for where there are instrumental breaks.” The song dates from Steve’s early adulthood and demonstrates how AI can help resurrect dormant creativity rather than replace it. Steve explains his vision: “I want people to be able to hear it, especially singers who can sing, and musicians who can play. Because if any of the songs I’ve produced grab their attention, I want to collaborate with them.”Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a conversation that peels back layers of both fiction and reality, Michael Ball demonstrates why Adelaide sits at the heart of Australia’s intelligence network while his character Zoe Baird navigates a bio-terror plot during a pop concert. Ball’s journey from RAAF intelligence sergeant to published author reveals the hidden world of modern espionage, where accountants and IT managers pose greater threats than gun-wielding operatives, and where Adelaide’s unassuming facade masks its role as a significant intelligence hub. The SA Drink of the Week delivers a genuine surprise as Bickford’s new sugar-free cordial range passes the ultimate test of a self-proclaimed “super taster” who typically rejects artificial sweeteners. These magnificent recreations using fruit juice concentrate and stevia prove that innovation can honour tradition without compromise. Our Musical Pilgrimage celebrates the decade that defined a generation with Denim and Stripes, an original eighties anthem crafted for radio newsreader extraordinnaire, Mel Usher, weaving together Madonna’s Adelaide Oval concert memories with the fashion and music that shaped an era. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Bomb Plot At Adelaide Oval With Michael Ball 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:03:43 SA Drink Of The Week This week’s SA Drinks Of The Week, are the five flavours available in Bickford’s new sugar-free cordial range. When Sofia from Bickford’s reached out offering samples of their new sugar-free cordial range, my immediate instinct was decline. As a self-proclaimed super taster with hypersensitive olfactory sensors, artificial sweeteners typically leave a metallic, clingy aftertaste that ruins any drinking experience. My honesty about this aversion only strengthened Sofia’s determination to prove these products different. The verdict: these cordials are magnificent. Released during Dry July, Bickford’s has achieved something remarkable with their five-flavour range including lime juice, lemon juice, tropical, lemon lime bitters, and raspberry. Using fruit juice concentrate for flavour and a naturally derived stevia blend for sweetness, they’ve eliminated the telltale artificial aftertaste that plagues most sugar-free alternatives. The lime cordial, crucial to get right given Bickford’s heritage, delivers authentic citrus punch without compromise. The raspberry, typically the most challenging flavour to recreate without leaving tanginess from artificial substitutes, tastes indistinguishable from its sugared counterpart. At just eight calories per serve and available nationally through Coles, these cordials prove that innovation can honour tradition. For anyone who’s sworn off sugar-free beverages after previous disappointments, these warrant one more attempt. 00:08:18 Michael Ball Michael Ball’s entrance into our studio carries the quiet confidence of someone who spent over a decade analysing threats most of us never consider. His latest novel drops readers directly into Adelaide Oval during a terrorist attack, but this isn’t mere sensationalism. Ball knows something most South Australians don’t: our seemingly sleepy state operates as a genuine intelligence hotbed. “Adelaide is a hotbed of intelligence and spies,” Ball reveals, explaining how military intelligence units, research facilities, and cutting-edge technology create exactly the environment where modern espionage thrives. “Spies these days aren’t James Bond running in with guns. If you’re doing that, something’s gone horribly wrong.” Today’s intelligence operatives work as accountants and IT managers, quietly extracting data without dramatic car chases or explosions that would signal operational failure. The conversation takes a fascinating turn as Ball explains his role as an intelligence analyst, serving as the enemy’s representative in planning rooms. Using empathy as a weapon, analysts must think like adversaries to provide decision superiority. “You cannot climb Mount Everest without climbing all the other hills and mountains beforehand,” he explains when discussing resilience, connecting military discipline to the broader challenges facing young people today. Ball’s path to writing began during a severe mental health episode, part of the PTSD that affects many intelligence veterans. His wife’s challenge that “you always give up” sparked the determination to complete his fantasy novel, but it was watching his three-year-old daughter enjoy Taylor Swift that triggered the darker inspiration for Zoe Baird’s story. The bastard in him, as he puts it, wondered what would happen if someone deployed a bio-weapon at such an event. The author’s approach to character development draws directly from his intelligence training. Writing 14-year-old Zoe required the same psychological profiling skills he used to understand enemy mindsets. Listening to Paramore songs on repeat for ten days, Ball immersed himself in the emotional landscape of his protagonist, creating a character his daughter could admire when older. “I wanted this to be a character that my daughter can read when she’s older and want to be like,” Ball explains. Zoe succeeds not through superhuman abilities but through intelligence, resourcefulness, and resilience. She fails frequently but continues forward, embodying the same qualities Ball taught in his military leadership workshops. Ball’s current work with Disaster Relief Australia provides another lens through which to understand his writing. Veterans flock to disaster zones because “a disaster zone is just a war zone without bullets,” offering familiar territory where they can serve again while processing their own trauma. The organisation’s research proves that helping others reduces PTSD symptoms, creating a positive cycle of service and recovery. The author’s workshops in schools teach failure as a learning tool, using intelligence concepts like center of gravity to help students identify what truly matters in their goals. His four-stage failure framework helps young people understand that most setbacks stem from unclear goals, changing circumstances, bad advice, or lack of proper support systems. Learn more about Zoe Baird and her novels and if you see this before September 26, 2025, you can enter the art competition Michael discusses. Primary and Secondary school artists could win $500 and have their artwork featured in Zoe’s next novel. Michael Ball on Instagram. Michael Ball on Good Reads. Zoe Baird’s: Popstars & Pathogens on Amazon. 01:34:09 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimate, we play a track by Steve Davis & The Virtualosos, Denim & Stripes, a new 80’s anthem written for Adelaide newsreader, Mel Usher. Adelaide Oval’s role as the setting for Michael Ball’s fictional terrorist attack connects to its reality as a venue for major international artists, from Madonna and the Rolling Stones to Adele and Pink. This link to pop culture stardom provides the perfect bridge to celebrate one of South Australia’s most recognisable media personalities. Radio newsreader Mel Usher’s recent milestone birthday revealed her status as an absolute tragic for eighties culture. Her social media shares about denim, stripes, and the decade’s distinctive fashion aesthetic sparked inspiration for a collaborative tribute. Steve wrote the song and then used his virtual session band, Steve Davis & The Virtualosos to bring it to life, crafting an eighties anthem that weaves together the era’s defining musical and fashion elements. “Denim and Stripes” celebrates everything that made the decade memorable: the fashion choices we now view with nostalgic affection, the music that defined a generation, and the unapologetic embrace of style over subtlety. From peroxide tips to padded shoulders and acid-wash, the song captures the decade’s spirit for anyone who lived through or appreciates that transformative period in popular culture. The track is now available across all streaming platforms, serving as both a birthday tribute to Mel and a broader celebration of the decade that continues to influence contemporary style and sound.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From the moment Sean Baxter arrives with glassware and botanicals for a proper gin education, this episode becomes something special. The co-owner of Never Never Distilling Co doesn’t just pour drinks, he crafts an experience that transforms how we think about gin, taking us from Triple Juniper through the coastal complexity of Oyster Shell to the life-changing intensity of Juniper Freak Navy Strength. Beyond the tasting lies a remarkable South Australian success story. Three acquaintances pooled resources for a broken still from a brewery equipment manufacturer, set up shop in a dusty grinding shed with no running water, and built a brand that caught the attention of global beverage giant Asahi. Their secret wasn’t chasing novelty natives but perfecting the London Dry style with an Australian soul. The musical pilgrimage celebrates The Violets’ upcoming 30th anniversary reunion show at The Gov, featuring their raw 1996 live recording “Somewhere” from the Lion Arts Bar during Adelaide’s vibrant mid-nineties music scene. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Never Never Underestimate Sean Baxter 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:02:52 SA Drink Of The Week This week’s SA Drink becomes an extended Never Never Distilling Co masterclass as Sean Baxter guides Steve through three distinct gin expressions, each revealing layers of complexity that challenge preconceptions about the spirit category. Triple Juniper Neat TastingSean begins with Triple Juniper, explaining the three-stage juniper manipulation: steeping for deeper, earthier flavours, pot distillation for additional layers, and vapour basket treatment for the lightest citrus and pine resin notes. “The vapour touches is kind of the first thing you taste,” Sean explains as Steve immediately identifies the citrus peel lifting from the glass.The neat tasting reveals gin’s textural potential. “Some of the flavours you’ll find immediately at the front are root driven,” Sean notes, describing how angelica root, liquorice root, and orris root land along the palate’s sides, while spices create warmth sensations in the middle. Steve’s poetic response captures the experience: “It’s like tire tracks leaving warmth on the road, and little critters looking up after it’s passed.” Triple Juniper With Coastal TonicAdding Strange Love’s coastal tonic with lemon and lemon thyme transforms the experience entirely. The salinity in the tonic connects with multiple citrus compounds, creating what Sean calls “a thing of beauty.” Steve describes the dilution effect as moving from aggressive light show to “Aurora across the horizon,” softer but bigger.The garnish selection proves crucial. Lemon thyme adds familiar yet unexpected notes, while the lemon provides what Steve characterises as an “echo chamber effect.” The finish reveals angelica root’s savoury qualities, part of the celery family and used worldwide in stocks and soups. Oyster Shell Gin ExperienceThe second gin immediately establishes its distinctive character. “Oyster shell gin makes everything taste like seafood for a significant amount of time,” Sean warns, explaining why distillation schedules matter. The neat tasting surprises Steve, who expected fishiness but discovers instead a coastal complexity featuring wakame seaweed and native Australian botanicals.“It’s whacked up a quick sandcastle across my palate,” Steve observes, finding nothing fishy but something entirely different from Triple Juniper. Sean’s botanical selection includes Elysia coastal daisy bush, native rosemary-like Florio, saltbush, and Geraldton Wax from Western Australia, which creates “almost like a lemongrass, lime leaf note.”With coastal tonic, lime, and lime leaf, the gin becomes what Steve describes as “icy poles at swimming carnivals.” The lime performs like a beach rake, cleaning the palate fresh. Sean emphasises this as “salted coastal citrus style,” designed to pair perfectly with Society restaurant’s raw bar in Melbourne. Juniper Freak Navy StrengthThe final gin represents Sean’s philosophy of amplification over innovation. At 58% ABV with no different ingredients from Triple Juniper, Juniper Freak concentrates every flavour element. “There’s so much juniper oil in it,” Sean explains, demonstrating how the spirit louches when diluted, releasing visible oils.Steve’s reaction proves transformative: “I think this is my spiritual home of gin.” The viscosity, evident in the glass’s legs, promises intensity that delivers. “That was one plus one equals 77,” Steve declares, referencing the oyster shell martini experience while finding his gin revelation.With pink grapefruit and rosemary garnish, the navy strength gin maintains its prominence while allowing other flavours to complement rather than compete. “You are probably the first person on the planet that’s been able to make rosemary a team player,” Steve observes, noting how the herb plays wingman rather than overwhelming the juniper.The tasting concludes with Steve’s pledge: “Juniper Freak gin will be a mainstay of my small bar from this day until the day I pass.” Sean’s response captures the distiller’s satisfaction: “Well, turns out you’re a freak, Steve, so there you are. You’re in the freak club.” 00:53:38 Sean Baxter What begins as Steve expecting “two little jug glasses” for a simple tasting quickly escalates when Sean arrives with proper glassware, botanicals, and the confidence of someone who knows their craft inside out. His Sunday morning setup includes everything needed for a proper gin education, because as Sean puts it, “This is a regular Sunday morning to me.” The conversation starts with World Gin Day celebrations at Hains & Co, where Sean’s oyster shell martini served in actual oyster shells created what Steve describes as “one plus one equals 77” rather than simple addition. The technique involves grinding actual oyster shells into the distillation process, adding minerality and salinity that recreates “the fresh rock pool that’s almost just been born, not the dodgy one at midday.” Sean’s background reveals the hospitality industry’s hidden career potential. Despite his mother’s investment in “eight years of tertiary education,” Sean chose bartending, eventually becoming a Johnny Walker brand ambassador. “I always felt so connected to the idea of hospitality and service,” he explains, emphasising that memorable experiences come from people who understand their value in making others feel welcome. The Never Never origin story defies conventional startup wisdom. Three men who weren’t close friends pooled money for a broken 300-litre still that was actually a shop floor model from Spark Brew. “It didn’t actually work. It wasn’t made to work. It was made to measure,” Sean recalls. Located in Big Shed Brewing’s grinding shed without running water, Tim Boast had to carry 20-litre containers of filtered water 20 metres for every distillation run. Their decision to focus on London Dry style rather than native botanicals proved prescient. “What didn’t exist was a gin that celebrated London style, but was Australian,” Sean explains. While others explored native ingredients, Never Never perfected juniper-forward gins that bartenders understood instinctively. The strategy worked: in 2019, they won World’s Best Classic Gin, and in 2022, World’s Best London Dry for their Triple Juniper. The recent acquisition by Asahi represents validation of a decade-long vision. “The year before, we had to go through redundancies. We were struggling to keep the lights on,” Sean admits. The transformation from near-closure to global expansion opportunities makes him emotional: “We built a brand in the back of a shed in a western suburb of Adelaide for nothing.” Their label evolution from angular, colour-based designs to cleaner, more readable bottles reflects practical lessons learned. The original 500ml bottles and low-light illegible labels worked for small-scale operations but hindered growth. The new tall bottles with clear branding support their global ambitions while maintaining the “horizon line” concept that embodies Never Never’s philosophy. Sean’s passion for blended whiskey reveals industry prejudices worth questioning. His father’s collection of unopened Johnny Walker bottles, hidden because he “didn’t think he was good enough to drink it,” illustrates how perceptions of premium products can create unnecessary barriers. “Johnny Red is someone’s premium whiskey,” an elderly gentleman once reminded Sean during a seminar, a lesson that shaped his inclusive approach to spirits. 01:26:13 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimate, The Violets return to mark 30 years since their debut album “Leased Regret” with a reunion show at The Gov on Friday 29th August. The original supporters Batteries Not Included and The Jaynes share the bill, creating what promises to be “nostalgia with driving guitars.” The featured track “Somewhere” captures The Violets live at Lion Arts Bar in 1996, during the venue’s peak as a showcase for Adelaide’s most promising acts. The raw energy and guitar-driven sound defined much of Adelaide’s music scene through the nineties and early 2000s, when venues like Lion Arts Bar provided crucial platforms for emerging talent. Batteries Not Included’s inclusion adds perfect symmetry, as they gave The Violets their first gig at Limbo Nightclub in 1992. The reunion represents one of those full-circle moments that happen regularly in Adelaide’s tight-knit music community, where relationships forged decades ago continue to shape current events. The tenuous gin connection acknowledges the Navy Strength Juniper Freak’s influence on Steve’s commentary, though the real connection lies in how both The Violets and Never Never represent South Australian creativity finding its voice and reaching beyond local boundaries.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When a winemaker builds a giant Rubik’s cube in McLaren Vale, fills it with Salvador Dali sculptures and art, and creates wines that pair with songs and poems, you know you’re about to discover something extraordinary. Chester Osborn has constructed what shouldn’t work but absolutely does – a surrealist manifesto planted in the heart of South Australian wine country that would make André Breton proud and the Márek Brothers, those Czech surrealist pioneers who shocked Adelaide in 1948, absolutely delighted. Our SA Drink of the Week flows directly from the architect of this impossible vision, as Chester pours his Vociferous Dipsomaniac 2010 – a wine that transforms before our very palate, revealing violet gardens and a scattering of spices whilst teaching us that great winemaking is really just the elegant management of faults. Like the Cube itself, this shiraz demonstrates that the most revolutionary act might simply be saying “yes, and” to the impossible. The Musical Pilgrimage takes an unprecedented turn as we hear both Chester’s stream-of-consciousness theory connecting wine to quantum physics and time dilation, followed by Steve Davis’ original piece called “Folded Clocks” – a meditation on Salvador Dali’s persistence of memory, created in response to his visit to the Cube where he experienced its artistic revelations firsthand. You can navigate episodes using chapter markers in your podcast app. Not a fan of one segment? You can click next to jump to the next chapter in the show. We’re here to serve! The Adelaide Show Podcast: Awarded Silver for Best Interview Podcast in Australia at the 2021 Australian Podcast Awards and named as Finalist for Best News and Current Affairs Podcast in the 2018 Australian Podcast Awards. And please consider becoming part of our podcast by joining our Inner Circle. It’s an email list. Join it and you might get an email on a Sunday or Monday seeking question ideas, guest ideas and requests for other bits of feedback about YOUR podcast, The Adelaide Show. Email us directly and we’ll add you to the list: podcast@theadelaideshow.com.au If you enjoy the show, please leave us a 5-star review in iTunes or other podcast sites, or buy some great merch from our Red Bubble store – The Adelaide Show Shop. We’d greatly appreciate it. And please talk about us and share our episodes on social media, it really helps build our community. Oh, and here’s our index of all episode in one concisepage. Running Sheet: Surrealism In Wine And Life With Chester Osborn 00:00:00 Intro Introduction 00:01:56 SA Drink Of The Week The South Australian Drink Of The Week is d’Arenberg‘s 2010 The Vociferate Dipsomaniac, which Steve tastes with winemaker, Chester Osborn at the Duke Of Brunswick, which has a full suite of these intrepid wines. The name alone suggests Chester Osborn’s approach to wine nomenclature – dreamt up, he cheerfully admits, during morning toilet contemplation whilst reading the dictionary for “really interesting words.” This particular shiraz demands vigorous pursuit because it’s so compelling you’ll vigorously drink it, potentially earning the archaic designation of “dipsomaniac” – an alcoholic, for those unfamiliar with the term’s English parlance. What unfolds in the glass defies every expectation of a fifteen-year-old wine. Where vintage wines typically announce their age with that slightly pruny, sweaty character, this Vociferous Dipsomaniac reveals itself like a perfectly adjusted doona on a winter’s night – balanced, enveloping, with tannins that recline gently into your tongue like a tired person settling into an armchair. The secret lies in Chester’s philosophy of elegant fault management: picking at relatively low sugar levels to avoid shrivel, eschewing nitrogen fertilisation since the nineties, and using super-light toast French oak that lets the 34-to-56-million-year-old limestone terroir speak its chocolatey, bloody truth. As the wine breathes – and Chester insists it breathes better in the bottle than in the glass, for complex reasons involving condensation and molecular romance – it evolves from subtle violet gardens to dark chocolate and beyond, revealing why this particular vineyard, nestled beside the d’Arenberg Cube, consistently produces the only wine in their 23 single-vineyard collection that always carries a whisper of violet. After our toast to Queen Adelaide and an hour of conversation, the wine has transformed into something resembling an IMAX cinema experience for the palate – bigger, bolder, more ornate, yet somehow more at home with itself. 00:21:21 Chester Osborn Chester Osborn has achieved something that should be impossible: he’s built a giant Rubik’s cube in McLaren Vale that functions as both architectural marvel and alternate reality museum, creating a space where Salvador Dali’s melting clocks teach visitors about the fluidity of time while wine ages gracefully in barrels around the sprawling property. The d’Arenberg Cube stands as testament to the “yes, and” principle of improvisational theatre – that beautiful concept of taking an idea and running with it, which Chester has literally fermenting in his cube through careful design. When Chester woke up in the early hours and abandoned plans for another “fake heritage” homestead in favour of “something iconic, something like the Opera House,” he wasn’t just changing architectural plans – he was embarking on a surrealist manifesto. The Cube doesn’t merely showcase wine; it’s an Alternate Realities Museum where eight parameters of weather transform into real-time sound as you approach, where hundreds of Chester’s sculptures tell stories connecting rocks, flowers and fruit to wine, and where 30-second surreal videos play on loop in a 360-degree room, each one representing a different wine in their collection. The building itself challenges conventional wisdom at every turn. Engineers, architects and builders all declared various elements impossible, leading to the invention of new glass sealing systems, wind tunnel testing in Melbourne, and the development of facade techniques that won national glass awards. “There is nothing impossible,” Chester declares, channelling his mother’s wisdom that “out of every bit of bad that happens, twice as much good happens.” This philosophy permeates not just the Cube’s construction but his entire approach to winemaking, where managing faults becomes an art form and time dilation theories merge with tannin structure. What makes the Cube truly revolutionary isn’t just its architectural audacity but how it functions as a catalyst for unexpected conversation. Chester describes watching visitors – including tourism professionals who know each other well – suddenly following tangents, becoming more open to possibility when surrounded by surrealist art. It’s as if Dali’s telephone with a lobster on top starts conversations about what we might be when we’re talking, whether we’re boiling away like lobsters, whether some people really do chew our ears off. The Cube becomes a space where lateral thinking flourishes, where Chester’s Asperger’s brain – storing wine knowledge in imagination rather than automation – finds kindred spirits among visitors ready to embrace the extraordinary in the seemingly ordinary. Perhaps most remarkably, Chester pairs each of his 85 wines with a specific song and poem, creating a multimedia sensory experience that will be captured in his forthcoming book. For the Vociferous Dipsomaniac, he’s chosen The Doors’ “Riders on the Storm,” paired with his own poem connecting Morrison’s soft voice to wine’s penetrating vigour. It’s this integration of art, music, literature and wine that transforms the Cube from novelty to necessity – a place where South Australians discover that their square metre of earth punches well above its weight, where time becomes malleable as Dali’s clocks, and where saying yes to the impossible becomes the most natural thing in the world. 01:03:20 Musical Pilgrimage In the Musical Pilgrimage, we listen to Folded Clocks by Steve Davis and his Virtualosos. The Musical Pilgrimage takes an unprecedented turn with a dual revelation of consciousness and creativity. First, Chester shares his stream-of-consciousness theory recorded whilst driving – a spontaneous exploration of how energetic wines might age slower through quantum mechanics, where tannin tension creates light-speed vibrations that literally slow the aging process. His “Energetic Wines Explained Theory” suggests that great wines contain atoms vibrating near the speed of light, creating time dilation effects that preserve the wine’s essence – a notion that would make Salvador Dali proud with its beautiful impossibility. Following this quantum leap of imagination, we hear “Folded Clocks” – Steve’s original meditation on time, memory and surrealism created in response to experiencing Dali’s sculptures within the Cube. Using virtual tools to bring his words to musical life, the piece captures that transfixing quality of standing before art that refuses to be easily categorised, where melting timepieces suggest that our rigid relationship with chronology might be the real illusion.Support the show: https://theadelaideshow.com.au/listen-or-download-the-podcast/adelaide-in-crowd/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm incredibly honored to announce that I've won two major awards at the Asia Podcast Awards 2024—Best Interview Podcast for A Vietnam Podcast and Best Audio Producer for my work on all the podcasts created by Seven Million Bikes Podcasts!Since starting my podcast journey in 2019, what began as a passion project has now grown into a full podcast production service. A Vietnam Podcast, produced by Seven Million Bikes Podcasts, has allowed me to showcase diverse voices, explore Vietnam's rich culture, and share authentic stories with a global audience. Winning Best Interview Podcast is a huge recognition of the work and dedication poured into each episode.Being named Best Audio Producer is equally humbling. Producing high-quality podcasts is something I strive for, not just in my own shows but for every client I work with. Whether it's editing, recording, or refining the sound, my goal is always to deliver professional, engaging podcasts.These awards validate the hard work and passion behind the scenes, and I couldn't have done it without the support of my amazing team. We're excited to keep pushing the boundaries and creating even more impactful content!"Send me a message!"Become a Bắp Xào Đâyer in our community on Patreon and become part of something special.You can choose a Cà phê sữa đá, Bánh mì, Cơm tấm, Bún Thịt Nướng or the ultimate level, a Bắp Xào Đây. Need a stunning new logo for your brand? Or maybe a short animation? Whatever you need, you can find it on Fiverr.I've been using Fiverr for years for everything from ordering YouTube thumbnails, translation services, keyword research, writing SEO articles to Canva designs and more!Whether you're a budding entrepreneur, a seasoned podcaster, or anyone in between, Fiverr has got you cSupport the show

The financial impacts of closing recycling centers across California. Learning how to find joy and meaning at age 106. Finally, a concert honoring jazz musician Dave Brubeck is taking place in downtown Sacramento. California Recycling Deposit Investigation  in the last decade, leaving more bottles and cans littering the environment, and millions of dollars sitting in the state's beverage container fund. KPBS Investigative Reporter Scott Rodd joins Insight to talk about his investigation into why these centers are closing, what California is doing with the spare change, and what lawmakers are doing to make recycling more accessible. ‘This Is What It Feels Like' Living to 106 CapRadio's podcast This Is What It Feels Like was just named “Best Interview Podcast” by the Public Media Journalists Association. Hosted by Terra Lopez, This Is What It Feels Like allows listeners to put themselves in the shoes of everyday people at the center of issues that have been politicized or overlooked. Today we'll meet Glenna Walters, who lived to be 107 years old, and learn about how she found joy, purpose, and meaning in life. Dave Brubeck Tribute Concert A legendary jazz musician will be honored with a concert in downtown Sacramento this weekend. “An Ode to Sacramento” will be performed at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament on Saturday, July 6 at 8 p.m. The performance features Dave Brubeck's “Pange Lingua Variations,” which premiered at the cathedral over four decades ago. Dave's son Chris Brubeck and Rex Rallanka, Music Director at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament spoke with CapRadio's Paul Conley about the performance, and the piece's significance.

How the Supreme Court's ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson will impact the unhoused community in Sacramento and across California. Also, revisiting the experience of navigating the U.S. healthcare system as a trans person on This Is What It Feels Like. Response to SCOTUS Homelessness Decision Last Friday, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which has been called the most important homelessness case in decades. In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the court granted cities more authority to arrest and fine people who sleep outside in public places, even if they have nowhere else to go. Angela Hassell, Executive Director of Sacramento Loaves & Fishes and CalMatters Homeless Reporter Marisa Kendall join Insight to discuss what the court's ruling means for the unhoused community here in Sacramento and across the state. CalMatters is a nonprofit newsroom that partners with public media stations across the state. ‘This Is What It Feels Like' Trans Healthcare CapRadio's podcast This Is What It Feels Like is now a bonafide award winner. Hosted by Terra Lopez, This Is What It Feels Like allows listeners to put themselves in the shoes of everyday people at the center of issues that have been politicized. It was just named “Best Interview Podcast” by the Public Media Journalists Association, as well as being named first runner up at the International Women's Podcast Festival in the category “Moments of Touching Honesty.” This week, we'll listen to highlights from some of the episodes, beginning today with “Navigating the U.S. Healthcare System as a Trans Person.”

In celebration of both Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March, Mary put together this conversation series.During the final interview of the series, Mary talks with Keri Gray of the Keri Gray Group and the NAMED Advocates. The two discuss the gap between social justice and Disability Justice, how to close the gap, Black Disabled Lives Matter, and what it's like to live at the intersection of being Black and disabled.Keri Gray is a cancer survivor, entrepreneur, speaker, and facilitator. She is the CEO of the Keri Gray Consulting Group, LLC, where they strive to create professional communities of understanding through disability and racial justice education. She is also founder of the National Alliance of Melanin Disabled Advocates, which creates spaces for disabled leaders of color and BIPOC allies to gather, learn, connect, and grow around racial and disability justice. Keri's work has been featured in Teen Vogue, the New York Times, People Magazine, Time Magazine, PBS NewsHour, Madamenoire, and the Diet Coke campaign #Unlabeled. You can follow Keri on social media here and NAMED Advocates here.The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in both October 2022 and again in June 2023.

The Family Business is back in business for Season 6 - and a LOT has happened since the Alessis last stepped into the podcast booth. The Alessis welcomed a brand new baby / grandson (Marino), celebrated their first grandbaby's first birthday (Gianna), discovered that there will be a THIRD new Alessi baby in December...all in the midst of a lot of renovation and re-adjustments in their church and personal lives. In the midst of all that excitement and stress, it's easy to forget the precious moments and memories being made - and that's not good for any family.  Listen in as Steve and Mary Alessi help you protect the precious family memories that makes life special from the stress of everyday life, AND give you a sneak peek at all the powerful conversations coming your way in Season 6! If you like this episode, you'll love: How Successful Parents Set the Right Family Priorities | S1 E2The Perfect Family Meeting: How to Create a Memorable Mission with Your Loved Ones with Lee Domingue | S3 E20Fun, Family and Feasts: Sharing Our Favorite Traditions During Thanksgiving and The Holidays | S4 E12WE'RE NOMINATED! The Family Business with The Alessis has been nominated for a Spark Media Fan Award for Best Interview Podcast! Voting is open through Friday, September 23rd, so please tap the link below and cast your vote! Tap HERE to Vote JOIN THE FAMILY BUSINESS! Subscribe to the show on your app! Follow Us on Instagram and Facebook Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel! Leave a review! Have a question for the Alessis?Tap HERE and then the "Leave A Message" button to record your question!

In this episode, Mary sits down with drag performer and Drag Queen of the Year pageant contestant, Charles Galin.The two discuss Charles' pageant experience, virtual drag, why they choose to continue to mask in public spaces, lack of general accessibility in the world, and more.You can follow Charles on social media here.Production note: Mary's microphone was glitching at some points and she was unaware. Please refer to the transcript, if need be or if it meets your access need(s).The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in both October 2022 and again in June 2023.

Mary continues her conversation Season 5, All Stars 2 contestant of RuPaul's Drag Race, Detox for The Politics of Disability Pride series.The two discuss continue their discussion on what it will take to bridge the gap between the LGBTQIA+ community and the disabled/chronically ill community, the rise, fall, and possible revival of virtual drag shows, building community during the pandemic, and more.Episode content warnings: Mentions of ableism, adult languageThe Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in both October 2022 and again in June 2023.

In part one of the second interview for The Politics of Disability Pride series, Mary sits down with Season 5, All Stars 2 contestant of RuPaul's Drag Race, Detox.The two discuss what it will take to bridge the gap between the LGBTQIA+ community and the disabled/chronically ill community, advocacy, anti-trans legislation, and more.Episode content warning: Mentions of ableism, mild adult languageThe Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in both October 2022 and again in June 2023.

Mary continues her conversation with Season 12 contestant of RuPaul's Drag Race and the national co-chair of Drag Out The Vote, Brita Filter for The Politics of Disability Pride series.The two discuss anti-LGBGTQIA+ legislation, voting, lack of access to voting, lack of accessible social media, and more.Drag Out The Vote is a nonpartisan, nonprofit that works with drag performers to promote participation in democracy. You can learn more about it here.The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in both October 2022 and again in June 2023.

In part one of the initial interview for The Politics of Disability Pride series, Mary sits down with Season 12 contestant of RuPaul's Drag Race and the national co-chair of Drag Out The Vote, Brita Filter.The two discuss mental health, advocacy, voting, voting rights, Pride, the lack of accessibility when it comes to Pride events, and more.Drag Out The Vote is a nonpartisan, nonprofit that works with drag performers to promote participation in democracy. You can learn more about it here.The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in both October 2022 and again in June 2023.

In celebration of both Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March, Mary put together this conversation series.During the second interview of the series, Mary continues her conversation with Stacey Abrams' former press secretary, Jaylen Black. The two discuss advocacy, voting rights, lack of access to basic needs such as food and shelter, the intersection of faith and politics and Jaylen's new podcast.Jaylen Black is a communications professional who has spoken on behalf of some of the most powerful individuals in Georgia. Her previous roles include Director of Surrogate Communications for Reverend Warnock's runoff election, Press Secretary and Spokesperson for Stacey Abrams for Governor 2022 race, and Georgia Press Secretary for Senator Reverend Warnock's federal office. She has experience handling crisis Communications and plethora of political issues. You can follow Jaylen on social media here and here.The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in both October 2022 and again in June 2023.

Get early access to our latest psychology lectures: http://bit.ly/new-talks5 In this interview, I'm joined by Mark LeRuste. Mark is an author, the host of The Unconventionalists Podcast, and a TEDx speaker with over a million views. His most recent book: Glow in the Dark, provides a masterclass in the art of storytelling, and how you can leverage it to improve almost any area of your life. In this conversation, you'll learn: — Why stories play such a central role in human life — The psychological benefits of getting clear on your own story and sharing it with others — Mark's simple framework for telling captivating stories. And more. You can learn more about Mark's work at www.markleruste.com and get a copy of the book at: www.glowinthedarkbook.com. --- As the Founder and Host of The Unconventionalists, Mark Leruste is on a mission to help entrepreneurs and business leaders have an impact on the world with their message. Mark first burst onto the scene in 2012 after going viral with his creative video CV pitch “A Dream Job Would Be Nice”, which landed him his dream job as Country Manager at the globally-renowned organisation Movember Foundation, where he helped raise €2.8 million for men's health and inspired 110,000 fundraisers to sign up, winning multiple awards along the way. Since then, his videos have been viewed over 2.5 million times on social media and his podcast The Unconventionalists was recently named "Best Interview Podcast" at the Podcasting for Business Awards 2021. He is the author of “It's Not You, It's Me”, a modus operandi for unfulfilled professionals looking to do more meaningful work, and his popular TEDx talk “What They Don't Tell You About Entrepreneurship” has more than 1.2 million views. To connect with Mark visit: www.markleruste.com --- Interview Links: — Glow in the Dark Book: https://www.glowinthedarkbook.com/ — Mark's website: https://markleruste.com

In celebration of both Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March, Mary put together this conversation series.During the second interview of the series, Mary talks with Stacey Abrams' former press secretary, Jaylen Black. The two discuss how disability is viewed in the Black community, intersectionality, the disconnect between social and Disability Justice, and faith.Jaylen Black is a communications professional who has spoken on behalf of some of the most powerful individuals in Georgia. Her previous roles include Director of Surrogate Communications for Reverend Warnock's runoff election, Press Secretary and Spokesperson for Stacey Abrams for Governor 2022 race, and Georgia Press Secretary for Senator Reverend Warnock's federal office. She has experience handling crisis Communications and plethora of political issues. You can follow Jaylen on social media here and here.The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in October 2022.

If you are enjoying this show, please consider supporting the show by becoming a Patron http://patreon.com/user?u=82757269 Episode Overview: How long did it take you to find your purpose? Do you review what your purpose is on a regular basis? Exercise to clear your mind and not get overwhelmed by all you want to do. How to reel in the urge to help everyone in order to be more impactful. How do you find your niche and communicate your message effectively to your target audience? Why is it important to define your purpose? Do you need to quit your job to pursue your passion and purpose? How to reignite the passion at work. The importance of having healthy confrontations and not having fear of having difficult conversations. Things romantic relations have in common with business relationships. Defining what success means to you. The most priceless asset you can have. Validation and feeling enough. Breadcrumbs or following your curiosity. The importance of small incremental changes. Curbing impatience and appreciating your current progress. The imposter syndrome. 5 second rule. 3 most important life lessons. Why are we so scared to be authentic? The weaponization of vulnerability. Imposter syndrome vs imposter moments. Can you share your story, if you've done something bad aka you are the villain in that story? What's your recipe for happiness? About Guest: Mark Leruste - Author of multiple books , latest one speaking on how to share your personal story is called 'Glow in the Dark, Tedx Speaker, Coach, mentor and host of his famous 'Uncontionalists' podcast. As the Founder and Chief Purpose Officer of the Ministry of Purpose and Host of The Unconventionalists® award-winning podcast, Mark helps founders and business leaders clarify their purpose to better inspire and lead their people. Since 2016, he's been on a mission to eradicate career misery in the workplace for the next generation of leaders by empowering organisations and those who lead them to build purpose-driven and positive work cultures where people can bring their whole selves to work and feel inspired and aligned to achieve the company's vision. Mark previously served as Country Manager of the Movember Foundation, where he helped raise €2.8million for men's health and enrolled 110,000 fundraisers to take part, winning multiple awards along the way. Since then, Mark has worked with pioneering organisations, forward thinking leaders and disruptive event organisers including Google, TEDx, Intuit, INSEAD, Method & Ecover, L'Oreal, StateStreet, The Guardian, Samsung, YouTube, General Assembly and VirginStartup. His top rated business podcast The Unconventionalists® was recently named “Best Interview Podcast” at the Podcasting for Business Awards and reached 190,000+ downloads on Apple Podcasts across 100 countries. Find Mark on: https://www.markleruste.com Find Dana on: Instagram https://rb.gy/pm0wwp If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to review and share :) Watch the video version on https://www.youtube.com/@IsThisItPodcast --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dana-grinberga/message

In celebration of both Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March, Mary has put together this conversation series.She continues her conversation with Alison  Mariella Désir in part two of this compelling interview. They discuss what it means to be multi-marginalized in the Black community, how disability is viewed in the Black community, the pandemic, and more.Alison Mariella Désir is multi-talented: a founder, a doer, an activist, a connector, and an unapologetically straightforward communicator with a passion for community health. Alison came to running organically, following a period of depression, when a Black friend and role model trained for and completed a marathon.Alison is the author of Running While Black, the tv host and producer of Out & Back w/ Alison Mariella Désir (now streaming) and the host of Out & Back's companion podcast; listen here.Alison is the founder of Harlem Run, an NYC-based running movement, and Run 4 All Women, which has raised over $150,000 for Planned Parenthood and $270,000 for Black Voters Matter.Alison is co-founder and former chair of the Running Industry Diversity Coalition, a nonprofit that unites the running industry to provide resources, measure progress, and hold the industry accountable to equitable employment, leadership, and ownership positions and improve inclusion, visibility, and access for Black, Indigenous, and people of color.Alison holds her BA in History, MA in Latin American and Caribbean Regional Studies, and EdM in Counseling Psychology, all from Columbia University.Alison sits on the advisory boards for Strava and &Mother and is an Athlete Ambassador for Athlete Ally.You can follow Alison on social media here.The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in October 2022.

In celebration of both Black History Month in February and Women's History Month in March, Mary has put together this conversation series.She sits down with Alison Mariella Désir in part one of their conversation to discuss her book, Running While Black, the thought behind it, what running while Black means to her, the implications the book has had and the disconnect between social justice and Disability Justice.Alison Mariella Désir is multi-talented: a founder, a doer, an activist, a connector, and an unapologetically straightforward communicator with a passion for community health. Alison came to running organically, following a period of depression, when a Black friend and role model trained for and completed a marathon. Alison is the author of Running While Black, the tv host and producer of Out & Back w/ Alison Mariella Désir (now streaming) and the host of Out & Back's companion podcast; listen here.Alison is the founder of Harlem Run, an NYC-based running movement, and Run 4 All Women, which has raised over $150,000 for Planned Parenthood and $270,000 for Black Voters Matter.Alison is co-founder and former chair of the Running Industry Diversity Coalition, a nonprofit that unites the running industry to provide resources, measure progress, and hold the industry accountable to equitable employment, leadership, and ownership positions and improve inclusion, visibility, and access for Black, Indigenous, and people of color.Alison holds her BA in History, MA in Latin American and Caribbean Regional Studies, and EdM in Counseling Psychology, all from Columbia University.Alison sits on the advisory boards for Strava and &Mother and is an Athlete Ambassador for Athlete Ally.You can follow Alison on social media here.The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in October 2022.

In this season 2 bonus episode, Mary sits down with RuPaul's Drag Race season 11 finalist, host of Canada's Drag Race and executive producer/host of 1 Queen, 5 Queers, Brooke Lynn Hytes.The two discuss the differences in perceptions of disability in Canada and the United States, disabled representation in the Drag Race ecosystem and the lack thereof. Will there ever be a more accessible Drag Race format for disabled/chronically ill drag performers?They also discuss misconceptions surrounding disabled individuals, the future of 1 Queen 5 Queers, the inaccessibility of drag shows and whether or not virtual drag shows will be making a comeback.The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in October 2022.

In part two of this episode, Mary continues her conversation with friend Christophe Desorbay.The two discuss Mary's acting aspirations, the lack of representation on Broadway, auditioning for a Broadway role as some who is hard of hearing, and more. Christophe Desorbay is Franco-American producer and artist living in NYC. He currently works at Range Media Partners, finding the ways that theater can successfully interact with Film and & TV. Christophe is also a performer based in NYC, and thinks deeply about the ways that the industry can be more inclusive to disability. His regional theater credits include: West Side Story, Cinderella, Fiddler on the Roof, Guys & Dolls. TV/Film Credits include: ‘The Plot Against America' and ‘Wig,' now on HBO. He has also appeared in numerous ads and promotional materials, including Google Pixel, Daily Harvest, and The Book of Mormon. He has danced for JKDC, David Dorfman Dance, ELSCO Dance, and The Orsano Project as a company member. You can follow Christophe on social media here.The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in October 2022.

In part one of this episode, Mary sits down with her friend Christophe Desorbay about his experience as a artist, the ableism hard of hearing/Deaf performers on Broadway face, and more.Christophe Desorbay is Franco-American producer and artist living in NYC. He currently works at Range Media Partners, finding the ways that theater can successfully interact with Film and & TV. Christophe is also a performer based in NYC, and thinks deeply about the ways that the industry can be more inclusive to disability. His regional theater credits include: West Side Story, Cinderella, Fiddler on the Roof, Guys & Dolls. TV/Film Credits include: ‘The Plot Against America' and ‘Wig,' now on HBO. He has also appeared in numerous ads and promotional materials, including Google Pixel, Daily Harvest, and The Book of Mormon. He has danced for JKDC, David Dorfman Dance, ELSCO Dance, and The Orsano Project as a company member. You can follow Christophe on social media here.The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in October 2022.

Mary continues her conversation with founder and president of Row House Publishing, Rebekah Borucki. The two discuss accessibility, the disability tax, ableism and whether there is or will be a shift in representation in the publishing industry.Rebekah “Bex” Borucki (she/they) is a mother-to-five, self-help and children's author, and the Founder and President of Row House Publishing, Wheat Penny Press (Row House's children's imprint), and the WPP Little Readers Big Change Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving students in under-resourced school districts.You can learn more about Row House Publishing here.The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in October 2022.

Greipur Hjaltason comes all the way from Iceland to pull up a chair to the Comedy Roundtable. It was pretty cool, as Greipur likes to say.  Comedian Bill Burr has said Greipur is funny as hell and has a crazy laugh, which Greipur puts on full display during our conversation. Is there an app that Icelandic folks use to confirm if they are dating a relative? Do Icelandic people believe in elves? What does the fox say? Greipur tackles these compelling questions and more while answering queries from episode topics "Witch, Please," "European Vacation," and "Not a Chance."Check out Greipur's videos on Instagram and Tik Tok, where he has hundreds of thousands of followers who are treated to his quick quips about Icelandic life.  Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@greipjokesInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/greipjokes/

At San Quentin, Nate McKinney got what he's been dreaming about for decades: parole. Nate and the hosts of the KALW podcast Uncuffed talk about what it's like to spend your life hoping to be free. Their conversation first aired in November and earlier this summer, it took first place as the Best Interview Podcast, in the 2022 Public Media Journalism Awards. So to celebrate, we're giving it another listen.