Barely Gettin' By

‘Ok, Boomer’? Chloe and Emma have been thinking about boomers, millennials, and intergenerational warfare for a while now. In this episode, they discuss racist aunties on the internet and what to do about them. Next, they dive into historical questions like, who are boomers, why are they so entitled, and why are they so bad at the internet? They narrow down their discussion to the ‘boomer elite’, who got the best of all worlds in the second half of the 20th century as beneficiaries of first the post-war expansion of the welfare state and later neoliberal prosperity.
They find that in fact, there are plenty of older Australians who share the precarity and cynicism of millennials – so bring on the millennial/boomer alliance!
Richard Cooke, ‘The Boomer Supremacy’, The Monthly, March 2016 [$]https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/march/1456750800/richard-cooke/boomer-supremacy
David Graeber, ‘On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs’, Strike, August 2013.https://www.strike.coop/bullshit-jobs/
David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs, Penguin, 2018.
‘What’s with all the minions?’, Starts at 60, 19 August 2015. [This site is AMAZING for insights into the Boomer mind - CW]https://startsat60.com/discover/lifestyle/whats-with-all-the-minions
Nicola Davison, ‘The Anthropocene Epoch: Have we entered a new phase of planetary history?’, The Guardian, 30 May 2019.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/30/anthropocene-epoch-have-we-entered-a-new-phase-of-planetary-history
Meera Subramanian, ‘Humans versus Earth: the Quest to Define the Anthropocene’, Nature, 6 August 2019.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02381-2
Tom Griffiths, ‘Coming of Age in the Great Acceleration’, Australian Book Review, November 2014.https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2014/125-november-2014-no-366/2220-coming-of-age-in-the-great-acceleration

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With just one week until the UK General Election, Emma asked Chloe for a special mini episode to explain exactly what's happening. Chloe outlines the differences between elections in Britain and Australia, why this makes polling difficult, and why it makes predicting an outcome even harder. They discuss how Brexit, the NHS, and media bias will shape voters’ decisions, and what to look out for in the election on 12 December as the Labour Party seeks to deny the Conservatives the majority they need to leave the EU on Boris Johnson’s terms.

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From Elena Ferrante to Roxane Gay, in this episode Chloe and Emma talk about the many women who inspire them … and a few who enrage them. They take a historical tour of feminism from the first wave to the second, through the 1980s when feminism became *very comfortable with capitalism*, and up to the present day of #MeToo. After talking about feminist heroes of old, they ask: who should we be reading and listening to, to understand what feminism means today? (hint: it’s not Julie Bishop).
[Note: Emma was pregnant at the time of recording ... but we are now delighted to welcome the newest, littlest feminist, and the reason for any future delays in releasing episodes, Baby Viv <3 <3 <3]
Must reads:
Mary Beard, ‘The Greer Method’, London Review of Books, 24 October 2019.https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n20/mary-beard/the-greer-method

G.D. Dess, ‘Elena Ferrante: The Mad Adventures of Serious Ladies’, LA Review of Books, 29 July 2017.https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/elena-ferrante-the-mad-adventures-of-serious-ladies/
Monica Lewinsky, ‘Shame and Survival’, Vanity Fair, June 2014.https://www.vanityfair.com/style/society/2014/06/monica-lewinsky-humiliation-culture
Alana Schetzer, ‘Friendly Reminder: Julie Bishop Is Not Your Woke Feminist Bae’, Junkee, 27 September 2018.https://junkee.com/julie-bishop-not-woke-bae/176531
Kimberley Truong, ‘AOC Has Finally Dropped Her Skin-Care Routine’, The Cut, 28 January, 2019.https://www.thecut.com/2019/01/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-skincare-beauty-routine.html
Marci Robin, ‘Why it Matters That Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Wore Hoops to Her Swearing-In Ceremony’, Allure, 5 January 2019 [Note: AOC was modelling her look on Sonia Sotomayor, not RBG!]https://www.allure.com/story/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-red-lipstick-hoops-swearing-in-sonia-sotomayor-nail-polish
Hannah Ryan and Gina Rushton, ‘The Leaders Of Australia's "Time's Up" Movement Made Big Promises They Couldn't Keep’, Buzzfeed, 18 October 2019.https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahryan/metoo-movement-now-australia-tracey-spicer
Roxane Gay and Dr Tressie McMillan Cottom, Hear to Slay (but seriously, read everything! - E.S.)https://luminarypodcasts.com/listen/roxane-gay-and-dr-tressie-mcmillan-cottom/hear-to-slay/b52dbaee-2243-4230-ac20-8dc36ca6a453

Constance Grady, “Why Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood is facing #MeToo backlash,” Vox, 17 January 2018 (as a follow up to our discussion in the previous episode).https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/17/16897404/margaret-atwood-metoo-backlash-steven-galloway-ubc-accountable
Jess Hill, See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control, and Domestic Abuse, Black Inc, 2019.
Ruby Hamad, White Tears/Brown Scars, MUP, 2019.
Alison Whittaker, ‘Get Krack!n's season finale was the most nourishing despair I have felt in a long time’, Guardian, 28 March 2019.https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/mar/28/get-krackns-season-finale-was-the-most-nourishing-despair-i-have-felt-in-a-long-time

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Emma and Chloe have now spent a bit of time talking about British politics, and they’ve already spent some time delving into the rise of the right--or possibly even neo-fascism--in the US. In popular analysis, it’s basically impossible to avoid references to fiction in discussions about politics on both sides of the Atlantic. How many times have you heard the word “Orwellian” when you read about the state of politics today? But who exactly was Orwell and what did he actually write about? Chloe and Emma discuss how and why Orwell is everywhere and whether it’s useful to use his work to draw parallels to today. Are we living in 1984, or is it Gilead? Does fiction have anything to tell us about the state of the world?
Show notes
The tweets
30 June, Ann Coulter tweets an article about the Virgin Atlantic “Pride Flight” with her thoughts: “I get annoyed when the pilot talks. This is Room 101 in Orwell's "1984."https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/1145462857057705984
@ericrnolan1: Re: the footage of Trump meeting Kim Jong Un:"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." -- George Orwell, "Animal Farm"https://twitter.com/ericrnolan1/status/1145445914221404160
Bernie’s campaign manager, tweeting about ICE raids: “family op. How Orwellian.”https://twitter.com/fshakir/status/1142131845309620229
Daily Beast: “2020 Candidate Marianne Williamson: Vaccine Mandates Are ‘Orwellian’”https://www.thedailybeast.com/2020-candidate-marianne-williamson-vaccine-mandates-are-orwellian
Books and articles
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, Project Gutenberg.http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0201111.txt
Karl Cohen, “The Cartoon that Came in From the Cold”, The Guardian, 7 March 2003.https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2003/mar/07/artsfeatures.georgeorwell
“1984 (the BOOK not the year)”, Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything, August 2019.https://theoryofeverythingpodcast.com/2019/08/1984-the-book-not-the-year/
Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for the Future at the New Frontier of Power, Allen & Unwin, 2018.
Zoe Williams, “Handmaid’s Tale comes to life in Alabama”, The Guardian, 2 July 2019.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/02/handmaids-tale-alabama-women-marshae-jones-manslaughter-unborn-child
Dara Mathis, “The Handmaid’s Tale’s Worsening Race Problem”, The Week, 18 June 2018.https://theweek.com/articles/773904/handmaids-tales-worsening-race-problem
Angela Jade Bastién, “In Its First Season, The Handmaid’s Tale’s Greatest Failing Is How It Handles Race”, Vulture, 18 June 2018.https://www.vulture.com/2017/06/the-handmaids-tale-greatest-failing-is-how-it-handles-race.html
Michelle Debczak, “Study: Kids Who Read Harry Potter Grow Up to Be Better People”, Mindfloss, 30 December 2017.https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/521382/study-kids-who-read-harry-potter-grow-be-better-people
Alyssa Rosenberg, “Grappling with ‘Harry Potter’ on the series’ 20th anniversary”, The Washington Post, 28 June 2017.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/06/27/grappling-with-harry-potter-on-the-series-20th-anniversary/

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If Donald Trump’s presidency suggests America is sliding towards fascism, what can we do about it? Picking up on their last conversation, in this episode of Barely Gettin’ By Emma and Chloe look at the role of American institutions in enabling Trump. They compare this with the democratic weakness that enabled the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany in the 1930s, to unpick the myth of America’s uniquely strong, resilient democracy. If Congress, the Senate, and the Supreme Court can’t stop Trump, can Elizabeth Warren save America from a fascist future?
Umberto Eco, ‘Ur-Fascism’, New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995 [$]https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
Jane Caplan, ‘Trump and Fascism. A View from the Past’, History Workshop, 17 November 2016http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/trump-and-fascism-a-view-from-the-past/
David Runciman, ‘Is this how democracy ends?’, London Review of Books, 1 December 2016https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n23/david-runciman/is-this-how-democracy-ends
Richard Cooke, ‘Christ on a Bike’, in Tired of Winning: A Chronicle of American Decline, Black Inc, 2019.
Pankaj Mishra, ‘Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism’, New York Review of Books, 19 March 2018.https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and-fascist-mysticism/
Samuel Merrill, ‘Punching Nazis: What Would Indiana Jones Do?’, The Conversation, 24 January 2017.https://theconversation.com/punching-nazis-what-would-indiana-jones-do-71756
‘Every Nazi Punch from Raiders of the Lost Ark’https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47nkHeMGsuo
And here’s *that* painting of Trump in the DC swamp...https://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/crossing-the-swamp-good-painting

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Is Donald Trump a fascist? In this episode of Barely Gettin’ By, Emma and Chloe ask if we are seeing a visitation from Europe’s fascist past in America’s present. With the help of Chloe’s unusually vast library on the subject, they look at Trump’s use of propaganda and the media, his targeting and marginalisation of people of colour, Jews, and LGBTIQ people, the rise of the (pseudo) intellectual right and the weakness of American institutions. They ask how this compares with the rise of fascism in the 1930s, especially in Nazi Germany. They also take a brief detour into history counterfactuals, and explain how this could all have been avoided if Al Gore was allowed to win the 2000 Presidential Election.

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Emma and Chloe discuss the recent election result in Australia and what it means for the environment. What should people worried about climate change do now? To explore that question, they go back and look at former PM Bob Hawke’s environmental legacy and the role he played in saving Antarctica from mining. They discuss how environmental wins come about and how the landscape has changed since Hawke. How do we talk about climate change today and why isn’t that translating into action? What kind of communication works, and why? Why are we so obsessed with market solutions and tech billionaires? Chloe goes deeper into a discussion of the role of social movements, and what the long historical threads of nonviolent action might tell us about the way forward.
Reading List
On environmentalism and climate change:
Micha Frazer-Carroll, “On environmentalism, whiteness and activist superstars,” gal-dem, 25 September 2019http://gal-dem.com/on-individualism-whiteness-and-activist-superstars/?fbclid=IwAR2nZWGp9zqK04FGukcFIddz1HTLoQEWG5bDUPStAxwTIwMFG_18yl6TTRQ
Martin Gelin, “The Misogyny of Climate Deniers,” The New Republic, 29 August 2019.https://newrepublic.com/article/154879/misogyny-climate-deniers
Christopher Jones, “The Delusion and Danger of Infinite Economic Growth,” The New Republic, 2 October 2019.https://newrepublic.com/article/155214/delusion-danger-infinite-economic-growth
Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (2019)
Noami Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (2014) and On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal (2019)
David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (2019)
Maia Wikler and Thanu Yakupitiyage, “11 Young Climate Justice Activists You Need to Pay Attention to,” Vice, 1 October 2019https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/8xwvq3/11-young-climate-justice-activists-you-need-to-pay-attention-to-beyond-greta-thunberg
On tech billionaires:
Luke Darby, “Private jets, parties and eugenics: Jeffrey Epstein's bizarre world of scientists,” The Guardian, 19 August 2019https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/18/private-jets-parties-and-eugenics-jeffrey-epsteins-bizarre-world-of-scientists
Justine Musk, "I Was a Starter Wife": Inside America's Messiest Divorce, Marie Claire, 10 September 2010https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-starter-wife/
Adam Rogers, “How Rich Donors Like Epstein (and Others) Undermine Science,” Wired, 15 September 2019https://www.wired.com/story/the-problem-with-rich-people-funding-science/
James B. Stewart, Matthew Goldstein and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, “Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race With His DNA,” New York Times, 31 Juy 2019https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/jeffrey-epstein-eugenics.html
On Antarctica:Emma Shortis, “Lessons from the Last Continent: Science, Emotion, and the Relevance of History,” in Communicating the Climate: From Knowing Change to Changing Knowledge, Perspectives, Issue 2019/4, Rachel Carson Centre.http://www.environmentandsociety.org/perspectives/2019/4/communicating-climate-knowing-change-changing-knowledge
Emma Shortis,“History repeating as Greenpeace returns to the Antarctic,” Greenpeace Australia Pacific, 18 April 2018.https://www.greenpeace.org.au/news/historyrepeatingasgreenpeacereturnsto-the-antarctic/
Emma Shortis,“Saving Antarctica, the last continent,” Daily Review, 17 December 2016.https://dailyreview.com.au/saving-antarctica/53885/

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Chloe and Emma get together to update us on big moves in the US and the UK. Emma explains why the Democratic Party launched impeachment proceedings against President Trump last week, why it took them so long, and what happens next. Meanwhile, the British Supreme Court has ruled Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament illegal. Chloe explains why this offers hope to opponents of Brexit, and why it also introduces new dangers to an already explosive political situation.

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This week, Scott Morrison is going to Washington--or is it Mar-a-Lago? In anticipation of the Australian PM’s state dinner with Donald Trump, Emma and Chloe look back on the history of American-Australian relations. From the ANZUS treaty to Iraq (and detouring through conspiracy theories, Gough Whitlam, and the CIA), Australia has a track record of following the US everywhere it goes, including into war. With Trump ‘locked and loaded’, Emma and Chloe ask whether history repeating, and will Australia find itself at war in Iran?


Reading List
On Trump and Morrison/the US in the World:
Dexter Filkins, “The Moral Logic of Humanitarian Intervention,” The New Yorker, 16 September 2019.https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/16/the-moral-logic-of-humanitarian-intervention
Elaine Pearson, “Trump’s Attack on Asylum-Seekers Was Made in Australia,” Foreign Policy, 24 July 2019https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/24/trumps-attack-on-asylum-seekers-was-made-in-australia-png-manus-island-nauru-new-zealand-refugees-offshore-detention/
Tanya Levin, “What Scott Morrison’s faith means,” The Saturday Paper, Edition No. 261, July 13-19, 2019https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2019/07/13/what-scott-morrisons-faith-means/15629400008440
Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic, April 2016https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/
“America’s ‘credibility’ is not the problem here,” Crikey, 31 October 2017.https://www.crikey.com.au/2017/10/31/yale-diaries-americas-credibility-is-not-the-problem-here/
“The History of the USA and Australia’s Love In – and Turnbull’s Grovelling,” Daily Review, 6 May 2017.https://dailyreview.com.au/history-great-relationship-australia-us-love/59439/
“Trump, Syria and the Irrelevance of History,” Daily Review, 15 April 2017.https://dailyreview.com.au/trump-syria-irrelevance-history/58522/
“Teaching History in TrumpWorld,” Daily Review, 4 March 2017https://dailyreview.com.au/teaching-history-trumpworld/56534/
On handshakes:
Adam Boult and Chris Graham, “Justin Trudeau's handshake with Donald Trump the 'biggest display of dominance in the history of Canada',” The Telegraph, 14 February 2017.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/13/justin-trudeau-becomes-latest-world-leader-brave-trumps-awkward/
On Whitlam:
Christopher Knaus, “Whitlam dismissal 'palace letters' case wins right to be heard by high court,” The Guardian, 16 August 2019https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/16/battle-over-whitlam-dismissal-palace-letters-heads-to-high-court
Guy Rundle, “All facts point to US involvement in the Dismissal,” Crikey, 13 November 2015 [$].https://www.crikey.com.au/2015/11/13/rundle-all-facts-point-to-us-involvement-in-the-dismissal/
James Curran, “How Whitlam rattled the ANZUS alliance,” The Monthly, August 2012.https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2012/august/1348618116/james-curran/dear-mr-president
On the US and anti-Semitism in the UK:
Owen Jones, “Fighting smears and the antisemitic minority in the Labour party,” 8 March 2019https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qxk0hW0_EQ&feature=youtu.be

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With Brexit fast approaching, Emma and Chloe are slowing down to look back at how Britain came to the brink of crashing out of the EU.
In this very first episode of Barely Gettin’ By, they discuss how hard Britain worked to get into Europe in the first place and why, ever since, more and more people have wanted to get Britain out.
Starting with David Cameron’s decision to put the question of Britain’s membership of the EU to a referendum, they go over a long three years of political mistakes, elections, and negotiations. Chloe covers the social and political divisions of contemporary Britain, and what it was like to live through the 2016 Referendum.
Emma and Chloe cover the big and the basic questions, like why Britain just can’t seem to make a deal with the EU, what even is the backstop, what happens next with Parliament revolting and the 31 October deadline to leave the EU suddenly in question.
Reading List
Some illuminating fiction:
Seasonal Quartet Series, Ali Smith
Crudo, Olivia Laing
Derry Girls, on Netflix
The Favourite (2018)
And some non-fiction:
“The Northern Ireland Backstop”, Institute for Government, 12 March 2019
Cahal McLaughlin, “Where politicians fail, storytellers address the Troubles in Ireland”, The Conversation, 29 October 2014
Robert Saunders, “The myth of Brexit as imperial nostalgia,” Prospect Magazine, 7 January 2019.
“The Two Jacobs: James Meek on Post-Brexit Britain,” The London Review of Books, Vol. 41 No. 15, 1 August 2019, p 13-16.

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